


A Girl and Her Ghost

by LikeMmmCookies



Category: Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Supernatural Elements, F/M, First Time, Fluff and Smut, Ghost Smut, Ghosts, Implied Childhood Sexual Abuse, Oral Sex, Paranormal, Snoke is a monster, Soft Ben Solo, do i have a new kink?, they are both awkward virgins, things are going to get freaky
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-22
Updated: 2019-01-06
Packaged: 2019-06-30 23:10:27
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 9
Words: 31,716
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15761637
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LikeMmmCookies/pseuds/LikeMmmCookies
Summary: Rey Niima plans to spend her December reading, drinking tea, and rewatching Brooklyn 99 while house-sitting her boss Leia's gorgeous old Tudor manor far out in the moors of England. But her plans are interrupted when Ben Solo shows up.Rey soon finds herself falling for him as they spend day after day together. There's only one problem: Ben is dead.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Chapters will have TWs when necessary.

She dreams of a boy.

A boy in a black void, darker than night, so deep it bleeds the light from her.

He sits, legs criss-crossed like tangled willow branches, staring at his hands. He sees her, he sees her seeing him. His mouth moves, but the hollow darkness eats the sound.

She wants to flee, all this nothing aches in her body like cold steel, so cold it burns. But she slips closer.

And in his eyes, the only light, like midnight candle flames. Earth-rich dark but the edges burn bright. They lock gazes and she feels her soul change.

“I've been waiting for you,” he tells her. Even the vast malevolence of this place can't diminish the ringing depths of his honeyed voice.

She knows her confusion is painted on her face. She opens her mouth to ask -

He speaks again. It's a whisper and a plea, as if he casts a last desperate spell when all else failed.

“Rey.”

She wakes.

* * *

“I swear to God Finn, this place is haunted,” Rey laments, slumping onto an overstuffed couch. Her body slides down the slippery leather until she's staring up at the rafters of the ceiling, ancient wood decorated with abandoned cobwebs and a heavy coat of dust. “I had a really weird dream last night too, and it made me feel weird all day.”

Winter wind howls and it sounds like human cries. The house creaks loudly and she flinches.

Finn chuckles on the other side of the phone. “A weird dream? About what?”

“There was a guy and he said something to me, I don't remember what. And then I woke up.”

He laughs outright. “That's it? That's not weird. It was your first night, alone, in a giant house that's at least 300 years old, of course it feels creepy. On second thought, it might be haunted. Probably. Not - probably not. How many people do you think have died there?”

“ _Finn_ ,” Rey wails, “Oh my god, not helping!”

“Sorry peanut. But it's only like four weeks.”

“Six,” she corrects him.

“Right, that's like a month and a half away, you can make it that long.”

The house groans again, followed by the pop of wood and Rey's pulse picks up. “I might have a heart attack first.”

“At least you're not totally alone.”

She snorts. “A cat doesn't count. Plus this house is so big that she just disappears and I have no idea where she is.” She hears muffled voices on Finn's end.

“I gotta go Rey. You'll be fine, I promise. Love you.”

“Yeah yeah, love you too. Say hi to Poe for me.”

“Will do.”

* * *

 

Rey lays on the couch for a couple more hours reading a book before her curiosity overwhelms her. The cat, a scruffy calico whose name she was never told, appears from nowhere to wind around her legs as she climbs up foot-worn stairs to the second story. The owner of the house, Leia Organa, her boss and now house-sitting employer, didn't explicitly forbid her from any of the rooms except the attic. She and Han had done heavy restorations in the 25 years since they bought the massive Tudor manor, but some places still needed work. She told Rey the floors were unsafe, but Rey didn't miss the flash of pain in Leia's eyes.

At the top of the stairs she gently toes the cat away from her. “Cat, are you trying to kill me so I can be another ghost here?”

Cat meows at her, before darting away to chase some unseen creature visible only in the cat realm.

The rooms are ornate and heavy with the feel of time passed, but mostly unimpressive, unless you care a lot about antique furniture and fireplaces, and Rey did not. Many were empty. On the third floor she opens a set of double doors and fumbles around the wall to find a light switch. She flips it and a set of recess lighting blinks on to reveal a library. She ventures in slowly, mouth open in amazement, and spins around in the middle, marveling at the rows of books filled up so high there are sliding ladders on each wall. To her right is another giant fireplace, with several mismatched chairs circled around it. Rey immediately decides this is her new favorite spot.

“Leia definitely didn't tell me about this,” Rey says to the room as she trails a reverent hand along leather-bound spines that sparkle with gold leaf lettering. “This is magnificent.”

She hears the rush of a long-held sigh and jumps, heart pounding. She spins around the room looking for the source. Her neck prickles as if unseen eyes watch her.

“Just the wind,” she tells herself. But the wind doesn't howl as loudly here. And the wind doesn't sound longing.

She decides to retreat back to the familiar territory of the first floor living room and the slippery couch, which is safely surrounded by towering windows that let the gray winter light flood in, leaving no corner dark and shadowy. Unlike this library, which has a multitude of shadowy corners.

She hears the sighing again and she squeaks, rushing out of the room and yanking the doors shut behind her.

* * *

 

She dreams of the boy again that night.

This time, he appears in front of her, standing in the liquid night as if he waits for her.

She was wrong before, he's not a boy, just a boyish-looking man. The dark had shrouded his wide-shouldered frame and solid muscles. She studies his face, gaze dancing around his moonlight-pale skin sprinkled with tawny freckles and moles. Although everything here seems heavy and muted, she's again struck by the brightness of his eyes.

“Rey,” he whispers. Just her name, but it sounds relieved and grateful all in one.

He reaches for her hand and she meets him half-way, sliding her warm fingers between his cold ones. Their orbit tightens and she's drawn towards him. She notices that his lips are bright too, lush and large and cherry red.

He slips one hand behind her neck, cradling its delicate length with such reverent, cautious movements. The mere pressure of his skin on hers ignites a low burn between her legs and a quaking excitement in her belly. His touch is familiar and new all at once, half safety and half wild.

“Kiss me,” she tells him, tipping her head in anticipation of the kiss she knows he'll give her. He never denies her anything.

Their first brush is hesitant, like a musician trying to remember a long-ago melody. The second is remembrance, soft and sweet and melting. The third is desperate. Her fingers dig into his chiseled planes, strong but still they yield under her demanding hands. He crushes her body to his, dragging her feet off the ground. He sucks the heat out of her, needy for the sunshine in her veins to sustain him. She gives it to him. She knows their time is short.

She breaks from their kiss, lips bruised and bitten. “Ben,” she murmurs against his mouth.

She wakes.

Rey lays frozen in her bed, sheets clutched under white knuckles. Her chest pounds, but not in fear. The taste of the boy – man – _Ben,_ her mind supplies, still lingers on her lips, bittersweet like wine and cigarettes.

Her limbs tingle with unspent energy. “Might as well go make some tea,” she sighs to herself. She hears a soft rush of air, and looks down, expecting to see the cat at the end of her bed.

She sees Ben instead.

Rey screams. He vanishes.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Heyyllooo. I decided it would be good to post a new fic and ignore my three WIPs. However, for once in my life, this entire thing is done, start to finish, so I'll be updating at least once a week. I wrote it in like 2 days so I'm a little nervous about how it all sounds once it's posted and out there and I have more than a few badly-slept nights of perspective. I hope you guys enjoy!! Let me know what you think, I love comments. Like I'm shamelessly asking for comments.


	2. Chapter 2

Rey sits on the couch until dawn breaks, with a quilt wrapped tightly around her shoulders and Cat in her arms. At first Cat protested when Rey picked her up, squirming about and ducking her head in an attempt to break free. But then the cat had frozen, ears pricked in the direction of one corner. After that, she settled, purring quietly in Rey's arms until she fell asleep.

Her heart hadn't stopped drumming for hours. “This is very bad,” she whispers to Cat. “Either this house is truly haunted or I'm losing my mind.” Cat flicks an ear towards Rey's voice but doesn't wake. She envies the ability of Cat to not give a shit about the supernatural and/or insanity.

She doesn't know what to do. Leia is somewhere in the Peruvian mountains on a humanitarian mission with almost no phone access. She'd introduced Rey to her neighbor in case of emergencies or general problems.

Rey had only met Snoke that one time, but she immediately disliked him. His watery, weak blue eyes and the way he looked her up and down made her skin crawl. His gravely voice and grimace of a grin didn't help either. Plus it's not like she could just text the old man. _Hey Snoke,_ _I kissed a guy in a dream and then he showed up in my room. Is this house haunted? Leia didn't tell me about ghosts._

She toyed with the idea of calling a priest like she was in the Exorcist and then snorted. Even if a priest could do something, she didn't have the first clue how to go about finding one.

When the sun finally rises, it sends golden beams streaming into the room in a rare display of winter sunshine. It bolsters Rey, helping to calm her heart finally.

* * *

She doesn't see him again. Not outright. He's a whisper in the wind, a shifting shadow from the corner of her eye, the flash of a silhouette in the mirror before she turns on the light. She thinks he appears as she falls asleep to the soft light of the bedside lamp she can't bring herself to turn off. In the night, when she's too exhausted to still listen to her fear, her scratchy eyes begging to close all the way, his frame flickers to life, sometimes at the edge of her bed as the first time, sometimes next to her, sometimes hovering in the doorway. She gasps, her eyes fly open, and he's gone. Night after night.

Rey watches the plum-dark smudges under her eyes turn a shade deeper each morning and feels her temper shorten like a lit fuse on dynamite each night. On the sixth day, she snaps.

She lies in bed, an abandoned book next to her that she can't focus on, what with a murmuring voice weaving with the wind and a crawling shadow interrupting her every third sentence. She tugs the blankets up around her ears, as if to build a shell against the pit of dread she's sunk in.

The door creaks open and she half-whimpers half-shrieks, startling the incoming cat who dashes away with a hiss. Huffing, she throws back the covers and leaps out of bed. “Oh this is fucking ridiculous. I'm sick of it. You know what, ghost boy? Fuck you and fuck your creepy lurking! Either stop hiding or leave me alone because I just want to sleep!” Her tirade trails off into a soft wail and she slumps back to the edge of her bed. “Just one fucking night.”

“I'm sorry.” The response comes in a distorted, strained whisper. Her gaze snaps up to see Ben a few feet away, arms crossed over his chest in a sheepish slouch.

She shrieks again and he flinches. “Please stop screaming,” he asks, his voice a touch more solid and present.

She gapes, mouth closing and opening a few times before she finds the right response. “Well, fuck.”

Something like a smirk passes over his face. “Are you going to murder me in my sleep or something?” She blurts out, immediately flushing.

His expression doesn't change, and his level stare at her shifts to the book on the bed. Before Rey can so much as squeak, he reaches for it as if to rest his fingers on top, but his hand passes swiftly through. Something flashes across his face, a kind of amused resignation, but his shoulders wilt. “ _Wuthering Heights,”_ he remarks. “How fitting.” Again, that almost smirk.

He brings his eerily calm gaze back to her. “I won't hurt you,” he promises, words slow and drawn out like they pain him. He shudders a little, his form flickering. Rey is speechless again, even more so when he turns to leave the room. She breathes in sharply when she sees the back of his head. A ghastly wound runs diagonally across his skull, so deep an ivory sliver of bone gleams through. Sticky blood mats down his hair around the gash. More glistens on his neck, dripping down his pale skin until it fades into the black of his v-neck sweater. He flickers again, then disappears.

Rey flops back onto her bed and blows out a long breath. Even though her heart beats a bit faster than normal, relief leaks through her thoughts. And a pang of _disappointment?_ Questions queue in her mind, but that relief smooths them over, quieting her thoughts until she drifts off into a deep sleep.

* * *

 

Rey wakes up feeling more refreshed than she has all week. She meanders through the morning, carrying her book, toast, and tea into the library. She drags the dusty curtains back from the ceiling to floor window in one wall, bathing the room in soft light. She manages to stoke a small fire after several minutes of fumbling and curses. She swears she can hear the barest rumble of a laugh echoing through the room and she frowns at the air over her shoulder.

She reads a few chapters before her attention wanders again. Just as she looks up, Ben emerges across the room, mid-stride, his hands outstretched towards a shelf of books as if his fingers trailed across them. Weak beams of sunlight pass through his form before he grows solid.

Her heart flutters and she chokes on her sip of tea, drawing his gaze. They stare at each other for several minutes, awkwardness building with each one. “Well!” Rey bursts out, waving a hand at him. “What the hell! You're a ghost!”

The corner of Ben's mouth twitches in a brief smirk.

“You think this is funny?” Rey screeches, jumping to her feet. “I'm being haunted! This is a haunting. I don't even believe in ghosts! And now there is a fucking ghost. In. My. House.”

“Technically, it's my house,” he finally says. His dulcet, woodwind voice is slightly deeper in real life and something about its lightly monotone lilt soothes her.

She drags in a deep breath and sits down, shuddering when she notices how he hovers over the floor several centimeters.

“That's really creepy,” she tells him when he notices her staring at his feet.

“I _am_ a ghost.” Again, the hint of a smirk. She glares and he squints at her but after a moment sinks down until it looks like he's standing on the floor. “Better?”

She just shrugs despondently, dropping her head into her hands. “This is insane. _Insane_. When I open my eyes, you'll be gone,” she says out loud to herself.

She lifts her head and squeaks to find Ben much closer. A kind of burning intensity glows in his deep brown eyes as he studies her. “I'm not going anywhere, Rey.” There's a tiny twitch under his right eye. “I'm stuck here.”

She recoils an inch. “How do you know my name?”

“I heard my Mom call you that before she left,” he says, his eyes flitting away from hers for the first time.

Rey's jaw drops. “Leia?”

He hums in affirmation.

She blinks at him. “I didn't even know she had a son.”

Ben's face falls and he turns away from her. “I can't even count the number of times I've heard that.”

“I think,” Rey ventures, picking her words carefully, “that it has something more to do with you being dead in this case.”

He looks back at her, mouth slightly twisted in another smirk. “I can see why she likes you.”

Rey presses her lips together. “Um, thanks.”

“The cat's name is Emily, by the way.”

She raises a disbelieving eyebrow. “...Emily...”

“Like Emily Dickinson?”

She snorts. “The lesbian poet?”

His face lights up and her heart flutters again. “I see you know your counter-culture poet theories.”

She folds her arms over her chest and relaxes against her chair. “I think the idea of a virgin spinster who writes deeply intimate letters to another woman is clearly suspect.” A thought occurs to her and she switches tracks. “Were you here, in the library, last week? With me?”

“I was.” He regards her so steadily, without barely a fidgeting finger or even a blink. It feels, well, unnatural, Rey thinks with a grimace.

He tilts his head. “What was that look? That frown, just now.”

She considers how polite she's required to be with a ghost. “I think you act a little un-human. Not inhuman, just very -”

“- much like a ghost?”

Her mouth twists. “Yeah, that's one way to put it.” Her eyes wander around his face, lingering on his lips. She still remembers the way they felt on hers, tender and so soft. The way they felt when she caught them between her teeth, his hands down her – she abruptly shuts down that line of thought, hoping he won't notice her sudden blush, and instead fiddles with the ends of her hair. “So why were you hiding before?”

“Not hiding. Tired.”

She cocks an eyebrow. “Ghosts get tired?”

A little smile touches his face and it does strange things to Rey's heart. “This one does. It's more like energy. If I'm _there_ , it uses it up. And when it's used up, I go.”

She leans forwards, her curiosity burning away any trepidation she still feels. “Where do you go?”

He lifts one shoulder. “I don't know. I drift. It feels almost like a dream.”

She feels a little pang of _something_ inside, more wistful than sadness, and more affectionate than pity. “That sounds sad.”

His eyes tighten briefly. “Usually there isn't anyone around here, regardless of where I am.”

“So are you getting tired right now?”

He gives a funny half-chuckle. “Yes, I am.”

Rey creeps to the edge of the chair. “So how long until you -”

He vanishes.

“-Disappear,” she finishes with a sigh. A feeling quivers in her chest again, that same feeling as the night before. Strong enough this time for Rey to be certain it is disappointment.

* * *

 

It takes Rey two minutes from the time Ben disappears to rush downstairs and fire up her laptop. She tabs over to Chrome.

 _Ben Organa Callwick England_ she types into the search bar. She scrolls through almost a full page of unrelated results until she reaches a relevant article from a local newspaper, just a brief blurb.

_**Ben Solo Declared Dead** _

“ _Six years after the mysterious disappearance of Ben (Organa) Solo, Callwick police have closed his missing persons case and declared him legally dead. This news comes as no shock to the local community. His parents, Leia Organa and Han Solo, were not available for comments._

Rey clicks back six years in the archives of the newspaper until she finds the very first articles published about it. She moves onto other articles after a while, but after two hours of reading, they all start to sound the same. 24 year-old Ben Solo was staying at his family manor at the time of the disappearance. When his father returned from his last flight, Ben was no where to be found. None of his personal belongings were missing, his car was in the garage, and house lights were on, leading the police to suspect foul play. They opened a missing persons case immediately instead of waiting 24 hours. But that was the end of the trail. Ben had been home alone for nearly two weeks, with no credit card or phone use during that time, and very little internet activity, which cutoff completely 4 days before Han returned. His parents told police that was not unusual; he traveled frequently and often came home for a few weeks at a time for a break from people and technology. They combed the surrounding country side but found nothing. With a four day window for his disappearance, getting airtight alibis from all the surrounding neighbors was nearly impossible. With no leads, no evidence, and no suspects, the case quickly went cold. Keeping it open was more of a gesture of kindness for his family than out of any belief he would be found.

Rey rubs her aching eyes and shuts her computer lid. She wonders how long it will take Ben to 'recover' and reappear, anxious to ask him questions about his disappearance. Ghost etiquette be damned, if he could tell her about his death, she could figure out what happened to him and tell the police.

Excitement flutters in her middle and she almost feels guilty about it. She came to Leia's manor for a quiet month and some good money, but catching a murderer sounded fun as well. It didn't hurt that her partner in-crime (solving) would be a tall, handsome man with dreamy brown eyes that stared straight into her soul. _“_ Jesus, Rey. He's a ghost. He's dead. Ben Solo is dead. Stop.”

Saying the words out loud shocks her a little, but does nothing to help her wandering thoughts.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> really pleased about the response so far! I'm excited to get into this freaky ghost love story with y'all :)


	3. Chapter 3

Ben doesn't show up that night or the next morning. Rey paces the mansion, restless and searching, her energy driving her from room to room. She tells herself she isn't looking for him.

Around noon, she gives up her non-searching and bundles into her winter gear, firing up the old VW in the garage for a trip into the village. Leia had insisted Rey use the car as much as she wanted, even leaving her gas money. Rey hums along to the radio as she rolls down the narrow road to Callwick. There's a plastic Darth Vader figurine hanging from the rear view mirror and she finds a jumble of burned CDs in the glove box. She squints at the small, flowing handwriting on the back of the jewel cases, admiring the fluid backstrokes and artistic curls. She realizes with a start that this is probably Ben's old car and the thought sobers her. The CDs feature a collection of 90s grunge rock and an entire album by The World is a Beautiful Place and I am No Longer Afraid to Die _._ She drops the CD back into the pile like it burned her and instead pops in one of the other CDs and cycles through songs until she finds some she recognizes by Nirvana and Oasis. She imagines Ben driving the car, singing along to his music. She wonders which songs he played over and over.

As Rey passes the tiny police station, reckless inspiration hits her and she abruptly turns into the lot. She grips the wheel and takes a deep breath to steady her suddenly thrumming heart. “You can do this,” she tells her reflection in the rear view mirror. She bumps the Darth Vader toy with one finger before exiting the car. She plasters her nicest, friendliest face on as she enters the station.

A portly woman in uniform greets her at the front desk. “Good afternoon, Miss. How are you this fine day?”

“I'm wonderful, how are you?”

They exchange the pleasantries and small talk that any small village like this requires to get to an actual conversation. Rey tilts her accent just enough so that she sounds more local.

“Well what can I do for you, my dear?”

This is it. Rey bites her lip. “I'm doing a project for a class at Uni, it's on how police stations...operate. My project is specifically about how small towns and villages handle major crimes. You know, they have such small budgets, but you guys do so well with what you're given, especially the Callwick station.”

The woman beams at her with pride. “That's right, we have some of the lowest crime rates in the region.”

Rey smiles back at her. “That's what made a certain case I found so baffling. About six years back, a young man went missing?”

The woman's smile vanishes and she sighs. “Ohh yes, we all remember that one. Such an absolute shame. This boy practically vanished into thin air. We did everything we could but never found him again.”

“His name was Ben Solo, right?”

“That's the one. Truly a baffling case.”

Rey leans forward and puts on her most appeasing, 'good girl' face. “It would be so incredibly helpful to get information about that case for my project. I really think it will just add something no other case could. But there's not a lot of information online. Do you have any files or something?”

The woman's mouth thinned. “Just the police file.”

Rey pretends to look disappointed, eyes downcast. “Oh, I understand.” She sighs sadly. “I was really hoping to find something extra special here, but I know how it is. Procedure and such.” She offers the woman what she hopes is an understanding smile and starts to turn away.

“Wait! Miss.” The woman gives a small wave for her to come back and leans forwards conspiratorially. “If you promise not to tell a single soul, I could get you a copy of that file.”

“Oh,” Rey breathes in delight. “Truly?”

“It's a closed case and no one will notice. Just promise you don't share it with anyone.”

“I swear to you, I won't let it out of my sight.”

The woman nods briefly. “I'll be right back. Stay put.”

She returns after a few minutes with a thin, unmarked manila file and hands it to Rey. The distinct smell of freshly copied documents and warm ink wafts over her. The file is much thinner than she hoped it would be, but Rey hides her disappointment. “Thank you _so much,_ I'm so happy right now I could kiss you!”

The woman gestures at her in a 'calm down' sort of way. “Don't make a fuss. Happy to help.”

“Have a wonderful day,” Rey wishes her with a large grin. The woman smiles back and waves.

Rey books it back to her car, slumping into the seat and letting out a huge breath. “Wow, that was so easy.” Far easier than she thought it would be. She shrugs. Small villages are their own world.

The glow of victory follows her around the village while she purchases groceries. She makes her final stop at a bookstore she found online – the only one for miles, called Black Books. She enters the ramshackle store and a bell rings over the door. She pauses in the entry, eyes widening. Books are piled in haphazard stacks all around the shop. A large table in the center boasts a particularly chaotic collection of books that have no apparent relation to each other or organization of any kind.

A grumpy, slightly slurred Irish voice shouts at her. “Shut the door! You're letting the cold in.”

She jumps inside the shop and the door slams shut behind her. The voice in question comes from a 30s-something man sitting behind a desk piled with books, an ancient cash register, and papers and receipts. He's smoking a cigarette and reading and doesn't spare a glance for her. He is the definition of unkempt, his shaggy bedhead frames a face made from too many cigarettes and a never-ending hangover.

She creeps towards him, already intimidated. “Hello, sir?” He doesn't look up. “ _Sir?”_

“What,” he barks at her.

“Uhm, I'm looking for books on ghosts.”

He blinks at her. “Books with ghosts in them or a books about the general existence and mechanics of ghosts?”

“The latter.”

He takes a drag from his cigarette and a deep swig from a large glass of wine to his left hand. “We don't have that. Spirits, ghouls, wraiths, and apparitions, yes. But no ghosts.”

She narrows her eyes at him. “Any kind of paranormal presence will do.”

He scoffs and returns to his book. He waves in the general direction of the rest of the store. “Over there.”

She glares at him for a moment longer but he doesn't look back up.

She wanders around the store for 20 minutes, tilting her head sideways and upside down to read the titles of the books tumbled throughout the store. She realizes shortly that _none_ of the books have prices on them. Right as she's getting unbearably frustrated, a cheery voice interrupts her search.

“Good morning Miss! Welcome to Black Books! What can I help you with today!”

She looks up to see a slightly rotund man with a well-groomed mane of puffy hair floating around a friendly face.

“Ghosts,” she states.

He jumps, almost dancing from foot to foot. “Oh yes! Ghosts! Wonderful things, those ghosts! Yes, please follow me!”

She follows him around the store as he pulls various books from shelves and piles them into her arms, rambling all the while about his Grandmother who had a terrible ghost problem until she adopted a dog that was also a medium.

“Oh Manny, shut up!” It was the grumpy, smoking man.

Manny purses his lips and his cheerfulness is slightly muted.

“How can you stand working for him?” Rey mutters to Manny. “He's horrible.”

“Oooh,” Manny says. “Bernard's not that bad, if you ignore his excessive smoking and alcoholism, and shouting at customers, and lack of personal hygiene...” He trails off as she raises an eyebrow at him. His eyes dart away. “Right, yes. Those are all the ghost books, Bernard will ring you up.”

Rey approaches Bernard with trepidation and clunks her sizable pile down on his desk. “I'd like to purchase these.”

He doesn't look up. “50 pounds for the whole lot.”

Rey's jaw drops at the price before she realizes the books in her pile are at least twice that. “Absolutely,” she tells him, fumbling in her pocket to pull out notes before he can look at her selections. She drops them on his desk and whisks the books away. “Thankssomuchhaveagoodday.”

“What a strange girl,” Bernard grumbles as Rey exits the shop.

* * *

 

Just as Rey's settled down at the living room table with a sandwich, books and papers spread out around her, Ben appears at her shoulder.

“What's all this?” He asks in a soft tone.

“Ben!” She looks up at him with a smile and they lock gazes. Her hearts stutters when she meets his eyes, utterly drawn into their liquid depths. “Ummm....” she struggles to form a complete thought and the corners of his eyes wrinkle ever so slightly. “Research.” She forcibly turns her attention back to the mess at the table. She doesn't realize Ben is leaning far over her shoulder until he enters her peripheral vision and she takes in a sharp breath. He makes no sound, no noise, has no scent. He gazes down at her with that same vividly intent burn in his eyes and she gulps.

He drags his eyes away from her and down at the books and papers below. A corner of his lip twitches up. “Are you hunting for my killer?

Rey finds his nonchalance hard to swallow, but guesses it must be different when you've had six years to get use to the idea of being murdered. She realizes he hasn't asked how she knows his first name and hopes he doesn't grow curious.

He chuckles and turns his warm eyes back on her. “Is that my police file?”

“Yes,” she says a bit breathlessly. “I lied and told them I was looking for info for a project.”

“Isn't it illegal to have those?”

She gives him a small smile. “Very.”

“Naughty,” he says, something between a teasing laugh and a purr, and the sound shoots straight to Rey's core.

She clears her throat, trying to ignore the growing wetness between her thighs. “What do you remember?”

He tips his head and a lock of his glossy dark hair falls into his eyes. “About dying?” She merely nods in response.

“Almost nothing. I was out for a walk, I think. It was a beautiful fall day, sunny and bright.”

Rey smiles to herself when she realizes he's being sarcastic.

He continues in halting tones. “And then...nothing. My first memory – after – is my funeral. I got there right at the end.” A long silence goes by. “My mom was crying. I'd never seen her cry in my entire life.”

She takes in a sharp breath. “You don't have to talk about this if you don't want to.”

He looks at her again, a definite fondness in his dark eyes. “I don't mind. It's been a long time, I think.” His brow furrows.

“A little over six years,” she tells him and he nods somberly. “Can you – can you sit down?”

He gives her a puzzled look, his lips twitching. “Why? I won't get tired from standing.”

“It would just make me feel better, I think.”

Understanding crosses his face in a tiny wince, which he tries unsuccessfully to hide from her.

He looks pointedly at the chair next to her and she gasps, jumping to pull it out for him. “I'm sorry! I wasn't thinking.”

He doesn't respond, taking his time to sit down slowly and leans over as if making sure he is actually touching the chair.

He notices her watching him and presses his lips together with a swallow.

Her curiosity gets too strong. “What does it feel like? Like the chair or the floor?”

He thinks for a moment. “I can tell when something is there. It feels like...a hand dryer.”

Her eyebrows shoot up. “What?”

He smiles crookedly. “Those new fangled expensive Dyson ones where the air shoots out in a really strong, sharp line. When I pass through something, that's what it feels like. Putting my hand through an air dryer.”

She doesn't have the heart to tell him those dryers aren't new or expensive anymore. She already blundered into one rude situation. “Can you go through anything? Me?”

“Yeah. I walked right through my mom once. Watch.” He holds out his hand and she raises hers as well. She expects to see his hand pass through hers like through her book, but about an inch from her hand, a kind of electric buzzing passes between them and his hand bounces back. They both gasp and look at each other.

“What was that?” Rey says,

He shakes his head and looks back at their hands with a scientific curiosity. He brings his towards hers again, to the same result. He leans back a bit, and then with a thoughtful glance at her, brings his hand to her cheek. Her heart drops. He traces the line of her face, leaving her skin tingling and flushed in his wake. He moves his hand all the way down along her jaw, ghosting over neck and shoulder, floating down her arm, and coming to rest at her hand again. Her heart moves at hummingbird speeds and unbidden, finds her body moving towards his. She tips her head up just as he leans down to her, their lips inches from each other. It's not electricity between them now, it's a heady, magnetic fire that ignites Rey's skin and races down her body.

They draw closer and the energy reaches a tipping point, rebuffing them and forcing them apart. Rey sighs and Ben makes a tiny noise in his throat, the barest hint of a whine. Suddenly he moves from his chair. “This is isn't safe,” he whispers, pressing his lips together. She doesn't have to ask what he means. _Maybe I want unsafe,_ she thinks. Instead she just gives a little nod and turns back to her research, missing the flash of regret in Ben's eyes. “Do you want to hear about all your neighbors alibis?”

“Sure,” he says quietly, his voice a little hoarse. He doesn't sit back down, just stands along the wall with his hands in the pockets of his black jeans.

Before she can begin reading, he interrupts her. “How do you like _Wuthering Heights_ so far?”

Rey blinks at the unexpected question. “I've read it half a dozen times, it's one of my favorite books. Does that answer your question?”

His lips twitch in a smile. “I suppose.”

“What's your favorite book?” She counters.

“Don't laugh,” he says. “But _The Count of Monte Cristo._ ”

Rey can't help a smile. “Why?”

He bites his lip. “The revenge story. I relate to it, in a way.” He opens his mouth again as if he wants to add more but shuts it after a second.

She wants to ask what it is he seeks revenge for, but a tightness around his mouth and eyes stops her. He'll tell her, if he wants to. Instead she just says, “That's a wonderful movie.” She gives him a cheeky grin and he shakes his head at her in mock irritation but he's smiling too. Like all his smiles, they last half as long as she would like, but she savors it nonetheless. Right as she's about to mention the police report again, he disappears. She stares at the empty wall, trying not to feel abandoned. Suddenly the house feels huge and lonely again, and the ever present howling wind fills her ears where she wishes Ben's voice was instead.

* * *

 

Rey's tired, but she refuses to sleep. Instead, she sits in bed, knees to her chest, waiting. He always comes, right as she's about to sleep, as if to check on her, as if to make sure she's still there. Finally, he appears and she lights up. “Ben!”

His tired, drawn face immediately softens. She snatches the book sitting next to her and hold it up for his inspection. “Look at what I got from the library, _The Count of Monte Cristo_!”

He smiles ruefully. “Are you abandoning your other book?”

She nibbles her lip and brushes a hand over the cover. “No, I thought I might read to you,” she tells him bashfully, watching him from under her lashes.

His eyes widen in an expression that makes her heart squeeze. He begins to nod slowly. “I'd like that. I'd really like that.”

She pats the space on the bed next to her. When he balks, she sighs and rolls her eyes. “I promise I won't try to kiss you again.”

“I can't promise I won't,” he tells her in a tone that should be threatening but just feels like dangerous wish. Her mouth parts as her breath catches in her throat.

He makes his way closer to the bed, a silent war on his face. “Rey...I've existed in this _nothing_ space for six years. And today, the way you feel.” He shakes his head. “It's like the first warm day after a cold winter.” She can see it in his eyes, the way they rake down her body, the way the sight of her skin sets off a craving in him so powerful he struggles just to stand on the other side of the room.

But something in his hungry whiskey eyes fills her with a reckless yearning. So she holds out a hand towards him. “Please?”

He breathes like it's been punched out of him and makes that tiny whine again. But he closes the space between them, swinging his legs up on the bed. He sets his hand down slowly on hers, like testing ice across a river. He shudders and the same energy pulses through Rey and all of her nerves spark in unison, wishing for _closer_ and _more_.

But despite the craving that licks her middle, anxiety mutters quiet warnings. His skin gives off no warmth and he carries no scent, his weight doesn't create a dip in the bed and her body recognizes all of it and reminds her in a low chant – _this is not real, he's not there, this is not natural._

She shushes it and begins to read. When she steals a glance at Ben, his eyes are shut and his features are the most relaxed she's seen them yet. She reads to him until the pressure on her hands suddenly disappears. When she looks over, he's gone.

* * *

 

Rey realizes that even ghosts have routines. She most often finds him in the library in the morning and always in her room at night. They make their way through _The Count of Monte Cristo,_ and begin _Pride and Prejudice_ (also Ben's pick). Rey finds herself wishing she had more than five weeks in the manor.

They don't touch again. He keeps a safe distance from her at night and the disappointment swirls in her thoughts as she tries to sleep, always bumping up against the concrete knowledge that this – him – _them –_ is impossible. She shuts up those thoughts in a dark place and locks it tight – she can't think about what will happen when she leaves. How is she supposed to go back to her normal life knowing he's here, alone? And she finds that even beyond any kind of pity or sadness she might feel about leaving him alone, there's a part of her, growing every day, that doesn't want to be alone either. She wants to keep him. She wants to stay.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know this chapter is a bit short but the next one is reeaallly long and I'll have it up tomorrow. I'm really encouraged by the response so far! Thank you guys for reading and commenting, it makes me so happy! I'm having fun with this story and I hope you are too. 
> 
> If you caught the Black Book reference, I'm sending you a million kisses. And if not, you should go watch Black Books immediately because it's the best.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Rating has changed!
> 
> TW: Discussion of grooming behavior, emotional and sexual child abuse, and threats of violence. If you want to skip that content, stop reading at the first line of ****** and scroll down to the second line of *****. I'll post a summary of the skipped content at the end.

Rey wakes one bitterly cold morning to the swirl of a light snowfall and is more determined than ever to find out what happened to Ben. As she's standing at the kitchen window waiting for the kettle to heat, a knock at the door startles her out her thoughts. A quick peek through a front window reveals it is Snoke, holding a large brown paper bag in one arm. She thinks about pretending not to be home, but the guilt of leaving an elderly man standing out in the cold and wind gets to her.

She plasters a fake smile on her face before unbolting the door to let him in. “Snoke! What an unexpected...surprise. Please come in.”

“Good morning” he returns. “I came to bring some emergency supplies you might need, there are supposed to be heavy snowfalls this weekend and it will shut everyone in. Sometimes there's power outages and other things during big storms. The market in Callwick was a mad house.”

Rey feels even more guilty for her undeserved dislike for the man. “That's so thoughtful, thank you.” She takes the bag from him, and then hesitates. “Would you like to come in for a cuppa? I just put the kettle on.”

“That would be delightful,” he says, stomping the snow off his boots before slowly bending down to remove them. Rey runs off to answer the screaming kettle and returns to find him in the dining room, stooped over her pile of books and papers about the supernatural and her not-very-legal police file. He squints at her computer screen with a quizzical frown. “This is not subject matter young ladies should be studying.”

Rey clenches her jaw, reminding herself that his generation was very different from hers. “What exactly do you mean?”

“Death, murder, witchcraft, all those terrible things,” he says with a wave at her materials. “You'll invite the ghosts.”

Her eyes widen. “Ghosts? You believe in ghosts?”

He chortles. “You can't live out here and not believe in them.”

She leans forward, her curiosity outweighing her dislike. “So you've seen them?”

He bobbles his head. “In a way. Furniture moving of its own accord, dark shadows in mirrors, crying in the night, that kind of thing.”

Rey blanches, mentally thanking Ben for not doing anything that terrifying.

She nibbles her lip before confessing. “There's a ghost here.”

He lifts his eyebrows, waiting for her to continue. She waves towards her computer. “I thought it might be someone who lived around here, so I was looking into deaths in this area,” she fibs. Something inside her warns not to tell him everything.

Snoke's head tilts, a distinctly predatory gleam in his eye. “Someone from around here? Such as Ben Solo?” He nods his head towards her police file.

“You knew him?” Rey says, hoping the odd pitch in her voice is only noticeable to her.

Snoke takes a seat with a deep sigh. “I knew him very well, he was a bit like a son to me. He spent hours and hours at my farm with another neighbor boy, Hux. They were always riding the horses about, playing with kittens, falling out of trees. Getting into all sorts of trouble.”

A smile flits over Rey's face as she imagines a young Ben.

“Then he turned 13, and phhht, gone. He was too grown up to hang around an old man like me,” Snoke remarks lightly, but there is a certain strain to his thin smile.

Near Snoke's shoulder, Ben flickers into existence. His face falls into a mask of complete terror when he sees Snoke, shifting quickly into a murderous fury, both expressions Rey has never seen on him. He disappears again. Her skin goes cold, heart already pounding. She jumps up from the table, snatching their still-steaming tea cups. “Well, wow, look at the time. I promised my best friends I'd video chat with them in five minutes, so I best be going to that. Thanks for stopping by,” she tells him all in a rush as her eyes scan the room for Ben.

Snoke looks confused, but he lets her herd him towards the door. He pauses with his hand on the door handle and turns back to her. “Why exactly are you reading all those things about Ben's disappearance?”

That same tiny voice screams at her not to tell him the truth, but the words are out before she can stop them. “I think someone murdered him.”

Snoke's face freezes for a second, before his eyebrows pull up. “How curious. Well, please try to read something less macabre, my dear. And stay safe in all this snow!”

She fights to keep her fake smile, she can't help but feel as if she just made a critical error. “Yes, thank you, you too, bye now!”

The second she locks the door behind him Ben appears at her shoulder. “You shouldn't have told him any of that!” He rages at her, nearly screaming. She flinches away from his uncharacteristic outburst and quickly puts distance between them. He's shaking, breathing hard. “Snoke is a monster,” he spits, slamming his fist towards the wall. Rey instinctively braces herself for the blow but it makes no sound as his fist passes through. She recognizes that wounded look in his brown eyes, like a caged animal too terrified to distinguish between friend and enemy.

She puts her hands up and edges towards him with a low, soothing voice. “Hey, Ben, it's okay. He's gone.” She slides into his space, close enough to feel his body heat, if he had any, wishing not for the first time that he's really there. She studies his shining eyes and something clicks. “He can't hurt you anymore,” she says softly. Her words break through his furious haze and he slumps down to his haunches, face covered.

She settles on the floor beside him. “Ben?”

After a second he looks up at her, eyes wet with tears and pinched with shame. “I'm sorry I yelled at you.”

She accepts his apology with an outstretched hand and he extends his as well. Their fingers hover near each other as before, but this time the resistance is weaker. “They're closer,” she notes with a hint of wonder. Their fingers are barely a hair from touching.

Ben drops his hand like she stung him and she flinches with the rejection. “I could _feel_ that Rey, stronger that before, than I've felt anything in....well, as long as I can remember being like this.”

“Did the wall feel different?”

He pauses and tilts his head. “No, it felt the same as always.” His gaze grows soft and wondering. “It's only you.”

The twinge of awe in his voice and the wobbly breath he takes with 'you' makes her heart stutter. She holds out her hand again, a silent plea in her eyes and he reaches for her. They both fight against the resistance, straining to close that last distance, but still their fingertips refuse to meet, like the opposing poles of two magnets separated by forces beyond their control.

Rey growls and drops her hand. “I hate this,” she mutters, stomping around the dining room back to her seat.

“I wonder why it's changing,” Ben muses, turning his hand around as he looks at it. “Why now? Why did it change as much as it did and not more or less?”

She doesn't have answers for him.

Ben “sits” in the chair next to her, arranged so his elbow appears to lean on the table edge. He was getting better every day at that. His sad eyes are far away, searching out thoughts or memories long passed.

**********************

Rey scratches at a divot in the table surface. “What happened with Snoke?”

Ben's whole face grows dark again, eyes spilling over with a fear she's never seen in him before. He tips his head down, considering his next words. It begins slowly. “I grew up around him and a neighbor boy.”

Rey nods. “Hux. He mentioned him.”

Ben's eyes trace shadows on the wall. “Yeah, Hux. He was a little shit,” Ben says with a chuckle, “but he was still my best friend. We spent a lot of time over there. A lot of time with Snoke. He was like a father to me. Since Han's a pilot, he was gone a lot but Snoke was always there, always driving us into the village to get ice creams or giving us little gifts or playing football with us. We – I – loved him. I would stay with him, when both my parents were gone. And then, around when I turned six or seven...” Ben trails off, his throat scratchy and full. “It started slow. I was confused at first. I didn't know what was happening. And every year it got worse and I realized that what he was doing wasn't normal. I wanted to say something but he threatened us with all sorts of sickening things if we told anyone about it. Said he'd kill my cat or my mom. That no one would believe us anyway.”

Rey's blood turns to ice. “You mean -”

Ben locks gazes with her, a desperate need for her to see him, to look into him and witness his pain with him. “Yeah.” His voice drops so quiet that she can barely hear it. “Molested me. And r-ra-” He cuts off and his eyes squeeze shut. “I hate those words. It makes it sound so simple. Like these isolated events. It wasn't like that – it was never that simple. It never just happened and then stopped. It was always there. The fear and the anxiety and the memories.”

Her whole body aches for him, aches to hold him and wrap her arms around him and stroke his hair, kiss his cheek. Then she realizes that he might not be able to do any of those things, ghost or not.

“I would come back from his house and my parents would act like nothing was wrong. I hated them for it, I hated them for not _knowing_ , not being able to tell. I got so angry. All the time. I wanted to die. My parents didn't get it. They sent me to a psychologist, but I couldn't tell her about any of it because I was too scared.”

Unlike Ben, her tears fall. “I don't know what to say. That's horrible. I can't even imagine what that's like. I'm so sorry he did that to you. That's pure evil.”

Now Ben's gaze shifts over her shoulder. “When I turned 13 I vowed not to let him do that to me anymore. I just couldn't stand it, no matter what he threatened me with. I stopped going over there and avoided him as much as possible. My parents got mad about it at first, tried to force me to go, told me I was being ridiculous. I ran away, a lot. I used to take the train to see my Uncle Lando. I think – I think he could tell something was wrong. He always made me feel safe. After a while they just let me stay with Lando instead when they left. Even after I got out, I used to lie awake at night waiting for something bad to happen. I was afraid to sleep, afraid he might come for my mom or my dad at night and I'd wake up and they'd be dead.” Ben stops there, his voice too hoarse and strained to continue.

Emotions buffet Rey in endless, unrelenting waves. But mostly she is furious - at Ben's parents for not protecting him and at Snoke. _He deserves to die._ She hovers her hand over Ben's in an imitation of touch and his brown eyes swing to hers. The seemed black in the weak light, stained with all the evil of his childhood and pain beyond any human's capacity to endure.

She leans forward. “You know it's not your fault, right? You didn't do anything. Nothing you ever did caused this to happen.”

He lets out a broken breath and after a moment, nods his head. “I think so. I think I know that.” Something else rises in his eyes, warm and searching. “I've never told anyone all of that before.”

Rey has no words for him, so they just sit, eyes locked, until Ben lifts his hand to trace the line of her jaw; the yearning on his face matches hers.

****************

“Ben,” she begins. “I have to ask. Do you think Snoke killed you?”

“I don't doubt it,” he growls. He clenches his fist. “What I hate the most is that he got away with it, what he did to Hux and me. I went to confront him, when I was 24. I told him I was going to go to the police.” His eyes dart sideways to look at her. “I even brought one of those old fashioned tape recorders, like Agent Cooper uses in Twin Peaks,” he says with a brittle chuckle. “But I can't remember if I got him to admit to anything. All I remember is that I hid it before I went home. I shoved it into a tiny tackle box and buried it in this old shed on the edge of our property that was Hux's and my fort. And that's my last memory, until _after._ ”

His gaze skirts to her again.

“What?” She prompts.

“You told me to hide it,” he mumbles, fiddling with the frayed edges of a hole in one knee of his jeans.

Her mouth works, and she shakes her head as if to clear it.

“I was walking along the path to Snoke's house,” Ben explains. “And all of a sudden, this girl appears in front of me - you. You were cold and shivering. There was snow around your feet and in your hair and you were standing next to a white horse.”

Rey shakes her head again. “I don't understand.”

Ben shrugs. “I asked who you are and you said 'Rey.' And then you begged me to leave, said not to confront Snoke. You were so terrified. I told you I had to speak to Snoke. You nearly screamed at me, but then told me I absolutely _had_ to hide the tape recorder, as soon as I left Snoke's house. I'll never forget it. You said 'please Ben, hide the recorder and then run, as far from Snoke as you can. _Please.'_ And then you disappeared.

'Disturbed' was too light of a word for how she felt at that moment. “That's how you knew who I was,” she said. “What about the dreams?”

His eyebrows quirk up. “What dreams?”

“I – you were in my dreams, a couple times.”

He hums thoughtfully. “What were they about?”

She blushes, words stumbling around. “Umm nothing really. We just kind of looked at each other. You said some weird things. They were very short.”

He tilts his head and chews his lip; her answer is clearly suspect, but he doesn't push it. “They say time isn't linear,” he muses. “I don't have an explanation. I'm dead but I'm here. I saw you but I didn't. I don't know.”

Rey leans forward to peer intently into his eyes. “We have to get that recorder. If we have some kind of evidence that Snoke hurt you then the police have a reason to search his property. He has the tightest alibi, they didn't even bother asking to search his home.”

Ben's lips draw tight and he violently shakes his head. “You absolutely cannot get involved in this. If he killed me there's no reason to think he wouldn't kill you too.”

“I'll send it to them anonymously.”

He shakes his head again, harder. “No, it's not safe.”

“Ben, _please._ What about Hux? What if Snoke goes after him someday?”

His eye twitches and he wavers, clearly torn.

“I'll wait until right before I leave. I'll send it when I get home, even.”

He winces, so briefly she almost misses it. A hopeful light creeps into his eyes, as fragile and thin as the first rays of sunrise. “Okay. I think that would work.”

Rey looks outside at the thickening snow. “We can wait until the storm passes. It's been this long, it's not going anywhere.”

* * *

 

Ben doesn't disappear once for the rest of the day. That evening, they sit on a couch in the den and he watches _Breakfast at Tiffany's_ with her. From the corner of her eye, in the dark room, he seems almost real, like they are just a normal couple watching a movie together while a snowstorm howls outside. And she longs for that, for him to be warm and solid against her. For them to be more than a girl and her ghost.

After the movie, he follows her upstairs to her bedroom, sitting patiently on the edge of her bed while she brushes her teeth and washes her face. She returns and stands in front of him.

“Stay here tonight,” she asks in near-whisper. “Please don't go.”

Ben searches her bright hazel eyes, cast a darker sepia hue in the timid bedroom light. “I'll try.”

She smiles at him, a small thing – brief and pleased. She reaches out her hand in a gesture that was becoming both familiar and soothing. He moves to meet hers and Rey anticipates the warp of the air around their skin, as if time becomes thick and material in the space where they long to touch.

But his fingers brush hers, barely a whisper, almost a suggestion of a touch. Rey inhales sharply and snatches her hand back while Ben's eyes widen.

“What was that?” She says.

He barely inclines his head. “I don't know.” He holds his hand out again and she's already reaching for him. This time her fingers bump against his in a way that's unmistakably concrete and true. She slides them up his palm, marveling at the warmth lightly rising off him and the ridges and lines of his skin. When she reaches his wrist, his fingers close around her hand. Ben seems hypnotized, unable to rip his eyes away from the place their bodies meet. Slowly, with a shaking arm, he lifts his other hand to her face and brushes the back of it against her cheek. She sucks in a breath when the touch brings her entire body blazing to life. Her eyes flutter shut as he continues to trace the rises and dips of her face, following the curve of her lip and the arch of her eyebrow. He tickles a fingertip against her eyelashes.

She doesn't want to speak, doesn't want to break the spell, to disrupt whatever ripple in time allows what she's only dreamed of before. With hesitant, halting movements, she leans down as he tips his head up, and their lips touch, just a chaste brush. And then she's descending again, crashing into him with all the longing fury that's built inside her all week. His mouth yields and opens beneath hers without encouragement, and she delves into him, groaning when he drags his teeth along her bottom lip. He doesn't taste like anything, and when she pulls away briefly, her lips are as dry as if she'd kissed nothing at all.

Her hands settle on his shoulders for a moment before she recoils. His sweater feels the same as his hands did before, resistant and rebuffing.

Without prompting, he grabs the hem of his shirt and swiftly pulls it off. It doesn't disappear when he drops it on the ground but Rey is too busy drinking in the sight of his body to think about it. A broad plane of chiseled alabaster chest meets her gaze, and she reaches out one hesitant hand, searching his eyes for permission. He nods, grasping her jaw and dragging her down for another searing kiss. Her fingers trace the hard lines of his body, the movement echoes in her limbs, bringing to mind something felt once before.

She wants to be closer. She wants every inch of his skin on hers, in defiance of the power that kept them apart until now. She rips off her nightdress and tosses it behind her, baring her body to him. His eyes widen and his lips part when he surveys her muscular shoulders, delicate collarbone, and perfectly round, pert breasts. Part of Rey wants to turn off the light or cross her arms over her chest in an attempt to hide the part of her body she feels is too small, too unfeminine. But the adoring way he drinks in the sight stops her. He wraps his large hands around her narrow waist and draws Rey towards him to latch his lush, satin lips around a dusky nipple, already erect and hard against his tongue. Her pussy clenches and flutters as he swirls the tip of his tongue around her. Ben switches to the other breast and brings his hand up to cup and massage, making sure not to neglect one while he laves his tongue against the other. She moans again, threading her fingers through his raven hair. It's as soft and luscious as she thought it would be, and he groans when she drags her nails against his scalp, just as she hoped he would. She shudders when her fingers brush the sticky wet wound on his skull and she takes care to skirt the gash going forward. Even when she strays into the blood on his neck, her hands come away clean. She learns to ignore it. His hands are both pleading and reverent as he grips her body and drags them down to her hips, pressing his thumbs again the jut of her hipbones, pausing just above the line of her lace-trimmed gray panties. He looks up at her, cheeks flushed red, his eyes dark and ravenous, and Rey's already slick center aches for more. After a moment, she hooks her fingers in her underwear and eases them off. He _whines_ when his eyes fall to the dark brush of curls at the gentle mound between her legs, her tell-tale slick glistening on the pink folds visible beneath.

“Can I?' He rasps, and she nods, desperate for him to touch her and and take her however he wants.

He kisses down her body, his hands and lips never leaving her skin for more than a second. He wraps his arms around her thighs and lifts her onto the bed so her legs straddle his hips. Then with a final searing look, he lays back on the bed and pulls her body towards him, scooting her forward until her hot core hovers over his lips. With a gentle tug, he eases her dripping cunt onto his mouth and _moans_ as he licks a stripe through her fleshy center. Rey whimpers with anticipation as he takes his time stroking her folds and skirting her clit with tortuously slow drags of his tongue. Finally, he closes his mouth around the sensitive bud with a carnal slurp and she keens, her hips jolting as he coaxes bursts of pleasure from her. He alternates between sucking and swirling around her clit under she's shaking and moaning above him. He brings his hands up to cup her breasts and when he tugs and pinches her nipples, it's all the encouragement she needs to drive her into complete euphoria. She falls apart above him, every nerve flaring and pulsing. She cries out his name in between gasps and groans as he rides her over her peak and down again. Her whole body shudders every time he curls his tongue against her oversensitive core. It feels divine and she's tempted to let him keep going, but she wants something else. She slithers down his body until their faces are level again. She nips and sucks kisses down his jaw and neck, eliciting more tiny whines and moans from him, before capturing his eyes.

“Ben,” she breathes. “I want you inside me.”

His fingers dance along the curve of her spine and his breaths come sharp and fast. She doesn't miss the hints of insecurity and apprehension threaded in his smoldering gaze.

“But only if you completely want it too, I don't want any part of you to feel afraid or unsafe.”

His answering look melts her from the inside out. “I want that too,” he whispers. “But I've – I've never done this before. Because well, you know, because of -”

“I've never done this before either,” she interrupts him.

The anxiety flows out of him in one rush and his lips curl in a heart-wrenching smile. “Yeah?”

She runs her hands through his hair, soothingly, unable to stop touching him for a second. “I've never wanted to before.”

His chest hitches and he nods. “I want to, I really want too.”

She smiles at him, and then closes that last few inches for another kiss. This one is long and consuming and full of unspoken, overwhelming awe.

Ben flips Rey onto her back and toes off his Vans, then shimmies out of his pants and boxers. She takes in a sharp breath when she sees his cock, hard, long, and the angry red tip already weeping with precum. And so _big._ She bites her lip, unsure of how it will possibly fit inside her. As if answering her thoughts, he slips his hand between her thighs, dropping his forehead into her neck. “Fuck, Rey,” he moans. “You're so wet.”

She opens her mouth to reply but chokes on her words when he presses a thick finger into her drenched cunt, sinking in up to his knuckle. He crooks his finger against her front wall, brushing against the spongy spot that makes her see stars and she cries out, digging her nails into his hulking biceps. After a moment, he slips a second finger inside her, and then a third, scissoring her open as he continues to work that spot inside her. She's writhing against his hand, and her legs tremble with each stroke.

“Ben,” she pants, “I'm going to come again.”

He makes a small whine in the back of his throat. “Yes, please, Rey, come again. I want to feel you come on my fingers.” He scrapes his teeth against her neck and then bites down hard enough to skirt the line between pleasure and pain and Rey _adores_ it. “Yes, yes, that, there, more,” she babbles. He licks the spot and then moves up. When his teeth close around her skin again she sobs with delirious rapture, her cunt contracting and squeezing around his fingers.

He draws his fingers out slowly and Rey whimpers, already craving the pressure and stretch. Ben lays on his side, looking a little lost, his hands wavering around her frame uncertainly. She cradles his face and pulls him in a for a kiss. “Are you sure you still want to?” She says against his lips.

“Yes,” he says firmly, his voice breaking on the word.

“We'll figure it out together,” Rey promises him, searching his eyes for any trace of question. But she finds only a reverent wonder in those molten earth depths. “Do you want to be on top?” She asks, thinking it might help for him to feel more in control.

He nods shyly and sits up. “Why don't you lay down the bed the right way?” He grins crookedly at her where she's draped across the bed width-wise. She straightens herself out with half a nervous giggle and leans against a pillow, already reaching for him, silently pleading for him to be back in her arms again. He obliges, crawling over on hands and knees until she's between his legs, his arms on either side of her shoulders.

“Breathe, Ben,” she whispers, knowing it makes no biological difference to him but will help nonetheless. She spreads her legs wider, reaching to wrap one hand around his cock. He shudders when she tentatively strokes it, circling her finger in the slippery precum. She makes a few more strokes, growing bolder with each one, tightening her hand around him and marveling at how velvety he feels above the enticing hardness of his shaft. He's panting harder now and biting his lip. “If you keep doing that I'm going to come,” he warns her.

Instead she moves the head of his cock to brush up against her cunt, sliding it through the juices Ben lured out with his mouth and hands. He moans hard and sharp. “Rey,” he says, a begging tone in his voice.

She smiles, entranced by the sight of him already falling apart above her, pleading and shivering from merely her touch. She places her other hand on his hip, sliding it down the hard curve of his glute. “Okay,” she tells him, as they line up their bodies. He presses forward and she guides him into her, biting her lip and sucking in a breath through her nose when he enters her. She lifts her head to watch her cunt swallow him inch by inch. They moan together as he fully sheathes himself in her and stills.

“Is this okay?” He inquires, a worried look in his vulnerable dark eyes.

“Yes,” Rey tells him with a little whine, “you feel so good. Please start moving.”

He gulps and begins to thrust, pulling out almost to the tip before plunging back in. Rey keens and arches her back and he immediately freezes. “What's wrong? Does something hurt?”

“No,” she wails, “don't stop, that feels amazing.”

He shudders and begins thrusting again, rocking up with a movement that presses against her g-spot and has her gasping and mewling for more.

“Are you okay?” She asks him, running her hands up and down his sides.

“Yeah,” he says. “You're so tight and wet, you feel amazing.”

“Just for you,” she says, making him shudder again. “I only want your cock, I want you to fuck me so hard and fast.” She arches her back into him, grabbing his ass to urge him on and pull him in harder.

He drops down to his elbows with a groan, burying his face in her neck, and begins to pound into her in earnest, wringing a cry from her. She writhes beneath him, snapping her hips up to meet his and moaning every time he bottoms out.

He tilts his hips just slightly, ripping a deep gasp from her. “Yes, Ben, shit, fuck you feel so good. Don't stop,” she begs, her nails scrabbling at his back.

“Rey,” he says over and over, his dulcet voice humming through her body as every thrust sets her nerves alight.

Her cunt begins to clench around him. “I'm coming, Ben, fuck,” she cries out, her words turning into screams as he pounds her into her third orgasm. She shatters around him, her entire body singing for him. Her fluttering, clenching cunt pushes him the last inch and he cries out her name a final time as his thrusts grow shallow and erratic. He stills, shaking and weak above her as his cock pulses. He flops onto his side and they collapse against each other, boneless and blissed out. They lay in contented silence for a long time.

Finally she breaks the quiet. “How was that? Okay? Are you alright?”

He tightens his arms around her and kisses her forehead. “Rey, that was perfect.”

His words uncoil a little knot of tension in her belly and wash it away. “I think so too,” she says, sighing and stretching against him like a cat. “This shouldn't be possible,” she muses out loud.

He cards his fingers through her hair. “I think it's you,” he says. “You being here, it does something to me.”

They fall silent again, thinking about what it could possibly mean. Guilt and sorrow clog Rey's throat. Now more than ever, the thought of leaving threatens to split her heart in pieces.

He kisses her hair. “You should sleep.”

She shakes her head. She can't bring herself to sleep when he's still with her. “I don't want to waste this time,” she says hoarsely. She knows she'll have to pay back all this time together with his absence.

He doesn't reply, only strokes her hair until she falls asleep. When she wakes an hour later, he's gone again.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Summary of TW content section: Ben tells Reey about his childhood. Ben and a neighborhood boy, Hux, spent a lot of time at Snoke's when they were young. Snoke took care of Ben when his parents were gone, but he sexually and emotionally abused Ben for many years, threatening violence against his family or pets if he ever told. Ben finally escaped Snoke's grasp at 13.
> 
>  
> 
> OOkkkaaayyyy. So that is a LOT. Please let me know if you feel the TW or ***'off section isn't big or accurate enough, I don't want anyone caught unaware. 
> 
> Also that's about 2,000 word of pure smut. ;] Thank you all again for reading and commenting!! I love hearing from you guys and comments are the fuel for my hungry hungry writer soul.


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> TW: PTSD-triggering events and implied flashbacks to sexual abuse. Discussions of consent and emotionally abusive behavior. If you want to skip that scene, stop reading when you hit ******. I've put a scene summary in the end notes.
> 
> Also a warning, all my chapters are full of errors because I don't have a beta and I edit after I post (terrible habit I know). Give it 10 minutes and everything will be fixed.

Rey has 30 seconds of mindless ignorance before it all comes rushing back in garish color. Snoke, Ben, his murder, Ben. Last night.

Automatically, she reaches across the bed for him and her hand hits cold sheets, but she doesn't know what else she was expecting. The emptiness swallows her chest and she feels hot tears slide down the side of her face, pooling in her ears. She wipes them away in irritation. She has less than two weeks left in the manor and each morning comes with a rising sense of panic that's nested permanently in her stomach.

She shuffles down to the kitchen wrapped in a blanket, the lonely sound of a ticking clock her only company until Emily finds her, crying for her breakfast and head scratches. Rey makes and eats her toast like an automaton, each bite feels like cardboard and dust. She cracks open one of the books on ghosts she bought from the crabby Irishman, hoping to distract herself.

_There are three primary instances that cause the phenomenon called 'ghosts' and/or paranormal and supernatural events._

_Preface: A living individual present in a single universe who does not interact with any of their parallel universe selves may experience or participate in any of the scenarios explained below, including interaction with the ghost (Spirit). This person is called the Experiencing Individual (EI)._

_**First Scenario-Dimensional Interactions** _

_Ghosts, or other apparitions, may not strictly be the souls of a deceased individual. Commonly, the Spirit is caught in the intersection of one or more parallel universes with mutually exclusive events. The intersection may occur where our three dimensional world interacts inappropriately with the fourth dimension known as space-time. Intersection may also involve fifth+ dimensions (see Chapter 9: Fifth+ Dimensions and Theoretical Mathematics). However, fifth+ dimensions are not well understood enough to truly pinpoint how they may interfere with 1-4 th dimensions or how we may even experience them so I avoid discussion of them in this chapter. _

_Inappropriate dimensional interaction may occur because space-time is folded, or otherwise 'thin.' A good analogy for this interaction is the idea of a bubble encased within a second bubble. Each dimension is one bubble. The first is encased by the second, both are encased by the third, and so forth. Inappropriate dimensional interaction occurs when the fourth bubble, which encases 1-3 dimensions (1-3D), is warped or misshapen, and intersects with the surface of the 3D bubble. The intersection causes interference which manifest as paranormal or supernatural events. Past or future events may also mix with present events because of the interference. This interference may also manifest as a time loop, where one event causes the other, which causes the first, and so forth, infinitely._

_A parallel universe interaction (PUI) occurs when the dimensional bubbles of a different universe intersect with our own dimensional bubbles. The PUI can cause a kind of Schrodinger's Cat situation. Theoretical example: Universe 1 circumstance - Spirit is alive. Universe 2 circumstance - Spirit is dead. Universe 1 overlaps with Universe 2 and the Spirit of each universe merges. However, they exist in opposition, therefore, they manifest in either universe as a ghost, neither truly dead or alive. They are both._

_**Second Scenario-Psychic Energy and Traumatic Events** _

_Unrelated to the First Scenario, we have the case of a Spirit whose psychic energy is so strongly tied to a traumatic event that they cannot pass into the afterlife dimensions. In these cases, the Spirit may manifest as what we colloquially call ghosts, poltergeists, demonic activity, or other malevolent presences. They have 'unfinished business,' if you will. They can often become troublesome as they grow bored and frustrated as time goes on._

_**Third Scenario-Idiosyncratic Events** _

_All paranormal activity which does not fit into the First or Second scenarios falls within the Third scenario._

Rey growls and smacks one hand down on the table. “What the fuck does that mean? A Third Scenario? None of this makes sense! This is bloody nonsense.”

As she is ready to shove the book away and search for something more scientific, the sub-heading on the opposite page catches her attention.

_**The Experiencing Individual and First-Third Scenarios** _

_The EI can experience these scenarios in a variety of ways. Dreams are the most frequent method, where human consciousness often crosses over into 4D space or brushes up against the border (see Chapter 3: Dreams and the Untethered Consciousness). Dream events give rise to 'premonitions,' or so-called prophets. The EI experiences a past, future, or parallel universe event and returns to their present universe with knowledge or memories they should have no way of knowing. Non-dream events include visions or experiences that seem as though they are actually happening in the present moment. These instances can be identified through anachronistic artifacts or situational events which do not match the surrounding environment, such as highly localized weather incidents._

_The EI may be tempted to interfere or interact with the Spirit in any scenario. However, these interactions can help or hinder. The EI may even be the cause of the time loop in the first place, by setting events into motion which eternally perpetuate the events of the time loop. Attempts to guide the Spirit's psychic energy away from the traumatic event can result in the Spirit being unable to escape into the afterlife dimensions. They may also irrevocably entangle the parallel universes to the point where they prevent the Spirits of the universes from separating and continuing on in their respective experiences. Therefore, communication and interaction with the supernatural or other 'ghostly' presences is highly discouraged. However, in direct opposition to this opinion is that most frequently held by mediums or psychics. They believe that, in the case where the Spirit is tied to the 1-4 dimensions because of a traumatic event (Second scenario), interference is_ necessary _to release the Spirit so they can move onto afterlife dimensions. In my opinion, it is nearly impossible to distinguish which scenario a Spirit is experiencing, and thus I hold that paranormal interaction should be avoided._

Heart pounding, Rey slams the book shut and buries it under a pile of other books. “Ramblings of a mad-man,” she mutters to herself. But she cranes her neck to read the author off the aged spine. _Maz Kanata._

She presses her lip into a thin line before letting out a growling sound and opening her laptop. She types the author's name into her search bar and scans the results. There aren't many – the author's name is unusual and apparently _she_ (ramblings of a mad-woman, Rey amends), is fairly well known in the “scientific” paranormal field. She quickly finds Maz's website, which is brimming with articles and essays that sound much like the book she just read. The “About” page reveals a diminutive old woman with a slightly hunched back and enormous coke-bottle glasses. Her credentials boast an impressive list of PhDs (astrophysics, theoretical mathematics, quantum mechanics, various history degrees) and other acronyms. Rey wonders how Kanata strayed so far from her scientific roots. Still, something about the gleam in her oddly ageless eyes and knowing smirk compel Rey to go further. Her hand strays to the “Contact Me” tab before she can prevent it. Even as she's shaking her head in consternation, she types up an email to the old lady, keeping it brief and to the point.

_Dear Dr. Kanata,_

_I recently read your book_ Ghost Hunting: A Metaphysical Explanation of the Paranormal _and I have many questions. I'm being haunted, although I'm rather enjoying the experience,_ -here Rey blushes – _but your book makes me worried that I'm harming my ghost. I would appreciate any advice you have for me._

_Thank you,_

_Rey Niima_

“Now I'm turning into a rambling mad-woman,” Rey tells Emily.

“You certainly sound like one.”

She jumps at Ben's voice, spinning around with a grin on her face. He peels away from his post against the wall with a soft smile and she reaches for him, both hesitating before they touch, uncertain if the magic from last night still lingers. Then she surges forward and wraps her arms around his waist, gasping when her hands hit the softness of a sweater instead of a repellent energy. She rubs her fingers against the delicate cabled material. “I can feel your clothes,” she tells him with delight, beaming up at him. He brushes a hand over his sleeve. “I don't understand this at all.”

She hesitates a second before pushing over the pile of books atop Kanata's aged volume. “I did some reading. It sounds kind of nuts, but also somehow makes a lot of sense.” She flips to the chapter where she left off and holds it up for Ben to read. She watches his eyes rapidly move across the page, trying to interpret each twitch of his eyelid, blink, or crease of his brow. At the very last section his mouth pulls taut.

His gaze shifts to her, saturnine and gloomy. “Do you believe any of this?”

She searches his face before sighing and setting the book down. “I don't know,” she answers honestly. “I hate that it kind of makes sense. I mean, that part about the weather events? You said you saw me in the snow. And with what happened with – well, you know, when you were a kid. That's a lot of coincidences.”

“Two is a coincidence, three is a pattern.”

She blinks at him. “What?”

His lip curls. “That's how they find serial killers, anyway.”

She laughs once, delighted to see some of it spread to his eyes, chasing away the shadows in them just a little bit. But it doesn't last long.

“What if I'm making it worse?” She whispers.

He frowns again, a sullen sort of pout.

“You could barely hang around for more than a few minutes at a time when I showed up. And you keep staying longer and longer. Then we could touch. Now I can feel your clothes. That's three things that have changed.”

He takes her face in both hands. “Rey,” he says earnestly. “Nothing about you has made this worse. You are the best thing to happen to me.” She swears she can hear an _ever_ hiding among the honeyed tinge of his voice. But he doesn't say it, and so she tells herself it's just wishful thinking.

She doesn't want to think about this right now. She doesn't want to think about parallel universes and psychic energy and tangling Ben up so he can never escape.

“It's almost Christmas.”

He blinks at her aboutface. “What?”

“Christmas. The holiday?”

His lips twitch. “I know what Christmas is. I just don't know what day it is. I wouldn't even know what month it was if you weren't here.”

Her mouth twists. She hates these subtle reminders that _this_ isn't normal.

“Well,” she says softly, “I would like to celebrate it. I think it would be fun.”

“Fun,” he echoes with a deadpan tone. “I don't think ghosts are allowed to have fun. I mean, really, I'm completely failing at this. No wailing, no moving furniture in the night. I only made you scream _twice._ His lips twitch again. “Last night not withstanding.”

She lets out a half-hearted chuckle, but her expression is glum.

He touches her chin. “I'm sorry, I know you don't think it's funny.”

She swallows past the lump in her throat. “I'll forgive you if you help me find a Christmas tree.”

He kisses her once, slowly, but with a fervency that makes her forget.

“Deal.”

Ben helps her find an ax from the spider-filled cellar and follows her outside to the small patch of scraggly, stunted spruce trees that clearly didn't belong, and they pick out a Christmas tree. His smirk grows into a few chuckles as she pathetically chips away at the tree for an hour.

“Stop laughing at me!” She wheezes at him. “This is hard. The ax is dull.”

He flashes her a teasing grin, fully entertained by her struggle. “Whatever you say, sweetie.”

Her heart flutters when he calls her that but she pretends to frown at him instead. After a few more useless hacks, she throws the ax down with a frustrated wail and kicks the tree trunk until it starts to tilt. Then she jumps until the tilted trunk, hopping up and down to crack the wood. It snaps and sends her flying. She hits the snow with an “oomph,” laying in the snow until he joins her. “Do you think Leia will forgive me for killing one of her trees?”

“Yeah,” Ben says. “She hates those things. Whoever lived here before us planted them. Honestly, she'd be happy if you chopped them all down.”

“Nope,” Rey puffs, still winded. “I'm done. We only need one ugly tree.”

She drags it into the house, leaving a trail of needles behind her. At Ben's behest, she ignores Leia's command to stay out of the attic and creeps up the rickety spiral staircase to find Christmas lights.

The attic is cluttered with trunks and boxes, all tightly closed. She brushes the dust off one cardboard box, squinting at the scrawling handwriting along the top. “What is all this stuff?”

“My things,” Ben says quietly. He kneels beside her, staring intently at the box. “You can open them up.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yeah, I want to see them.”

She opens a box and peers inside. “It's full of like, paper and ink? And pens.” She pulls one out, admiring the sharply cut nib and graceful line of the handle. “Fancy pens. Wow. These were yours?”

“Yeah,” Ben admits, and she swears he's blushing. “Don't laugh at me, but I used to be a calligrapher.”

She squints. “Like...you wrote things?”

“It was my job. I had a company, with an employee count of one,” he says, pointing at his chest. “I hand-lettered things, like wedding invitations and programs and things like that. That was just to pay the bills though. I was getting my PhD.” He was _definitely_ blushing.

She lifts one eyebrow. “In what?”

He chews his lip and squeezes his eyes shut in mock embarrassment. “My thesis was on the spread of illuminated manuscripts from religious to secular texts in the 13th and 14th centuries.”

Rey's jaw drops. “Ben Solo, you are such a nerd. I think you are the biggest nerd I have ever met, in fact.”

He playfully shoves her shoulder, hiding a little smile. “Oh shut up. My thesis project made quite the buzz in my field.”

She grins. “Oh yes, that enormous field of medieval illuminated manuscript scholars.”

He pretends to pout. “I'm going to leave unless you stop being mean.”

“Oh hush,” she tells him, dropping a kiss on his cheek. “No you're not. Where were you studying?”

“Oxford,” he tells her bashfully.

Her jaw drops again. “Holy shit. Why didn't you tell me any of this before?? You told me you worked for your mom.”

He shrugs. “I did work for her, a little, sometimes. It's a little embarrassing, I guess. I got a lot of weird looks and blank stares when I talked about my work, so I just got used to talking around it.”

Rey hums. “So if I open up these boxes will I find a bunch of cool old books?”

Ben chuckles. “Not a chance, I would have gotten kicked out if I ever left the university with a manuscript. You need special clearance to get to the room they lock them up in. It's temperature, humidity, and light-controlled to prevent the manuscripts from degrading.”

Her mouth makes a little 'O.' She turns to another box and pulls the lid off. “What's in this one?” She pulls out a leather-bound notebook with a worn and marked cover.

“No, not that one!” Ben exclaims, but Rey is already paging through it.

“Are these poems? Wow, Ben! Did you write all these?”

He covers his face in shame. “Please don't make me answer that.”

She traces her fingers over the decadent swirls and loops of his calligraphy.

She picks one and reads it out loud.

“ _Thinly, a fear clings to me. I fear you will see more more and more, and want me less and less. This fear never washes away. Deeper than my dermis, squeezing through sticky collagen and cells until it was whisked into my blood. This fear lives inside me like a hundred different viruses.”_

She glances at him; Ben studies the floor. “Is this what happened?”

His head snaps up and he gives her a quizzical look.

“In relationships.”

“Yeah,” he says quietly. “The closer I got to someone the less they wanted to be with me. I was too much to deal with, I guess.”

Anger flares in her gut. She practically crawls into his lap, forcing him to look at her with his jaw in hand.

“Ben Solo. You are not too much. Those other people just weren't enough.”

He smiles sadly at her and runs his fingers through a lock of her hair. “Maybe. But it doesn't really matter any more.”

Maybe he means it doesn't matter because he has Rey now. And maybe he means it doesn't matter because he's dead and there's no future for him. She can't bring herself to ask him which one. So she simply wraps her arms around him and rests her head on his shoulder. He melts into her with a a sigh. If breath could speak, his would say _finally_ and _where have you been?_ And _why not sooner._

After several minutes he pulls away from her, rubbing his hands up and down her arms. “Let's get those lights.”

They find a box labelled _House lights_ in one corner. She digs through the tangled mass, admiring the bright, over-sized bulbs. “Why are they called house lights?”

“We only put them outside. I begged my parents for _years_ to let me decorate the house. I was obsessed with those lights.”

She gives him a puzzled frown. “What about your tree?”

“Never celebrated Christmas. I'm Jewish.”

Her eyes widen. “Oh! Wow sorry, I didn't even ask.” Then she lets out a small gasp and lightly punches his shoulder. “Ben! Hanukkah started yesterday. You should have said something.”

He shrugs. “It's fine. Holidays weren't really a big thing, with my parents gone so much.”

Her mouth twists and she fiddles with the lights again. “I know what you mean. To be honest, I've never actually celebrated Christmas, I mean, not truly.”

He lets out a short, disbelieving laugh. “How? You seem so excited about it.”

She chews her lip, avoiding his eyes. “I grew up in a orphanage.” She rolls her eyes. “Well, they call them 'small group homes' now, but that's really what they are. I bounced around foster houses for a while, before getting stuck with this one family.” Her tone turns sour. “Unkar Plutt. There were half a dozen kids in that house, all taken in for the government check. So there were no Christmases, no birthdays. None of that.”

Ben reaches for her hand, and Rey can't bring herself to look at his face, knowing exactly what she'll find – pity.

“Rey. Look at me.” His voice carries no trace of pity or that dreaded croon that drips with forced sympathy to cover the discomfort of the listener.

His eyes are starry skies – infinite and dark and velvety – and they fill her with the same sense of wondrous calm. He doesn't say anything, and he doesn't need to. _I see your pain,_ his face says.

“I've never felt so alone as I did in that house.”

“You're not alone.”

Even in the dim light coming through the dirty attic windows, she can see the tears glinting in his eyes, turned silver from the gloom. They're for her, and for him, because they both _know_ what it feels like.

“Neither are you,” she says, and he believes her.

* * *

 

Rey insists they bring down the menorah and candles she found in a different attic box. Ben protests, but only half-heartedly, and there's a kind of tender glow in his eyes as he watches her light the candles for him. She places it in the front window and they both sit backwards on the couch, watching the dance of the flames reflected in the frosted windowpanes.

“How did you know when Hanukkah started?”

“Facebook,” she replies with a smile.

He hums. “What's the internet like these days?”

Her nose wrinkles in concentration. “Well, Facebook is still a thing, obviously, but it's kind of terrible. Mostly people screaming at each other over politics. Snapchat became big, but now it's kind of petering out. Instagram is huge, so is Twitter.”

“What about Tumblr?”

She snorts. “Still the same hellsite as it ever was. New features no one asked for, a staff that won't listen to the users, constant fandom drama, and wwaaayyy too many porn bots. Honestly, it's getting awful. And yet, somehow, I can't leave.”

He laughs, hard, and Rey almost jumps. The wide smile that splits his face and the choppy bellowing noise of his laughter hits her veins like a drug and she finds herself craving more.

He chuckles again at her dazed, stupid smile. “What?”

She just shakes her head and leans in to kiss him, struggling between smiling and the desire pooling in her belly.

***********

One kiss turns into two and then three and then she's yanking off her shirt and peeling off her leggings and climbing onto his bare hips. He reaches between her thighs and finds her already slick and he wishes more than ever that he could smell it, that he could taste her. But he settles for the feeling of her silky skin against his, still marveling at the slight warmth that radiates off her body. She feels like release, like freedom from a dark cage and he wonders how he'll ever be able to exist when she's gone. But her demanding lips drown out those thoughts. Each lick of her tongue into his mouth and roll of her core against his cock coaxes a moan from him. She gently pushes on his shoulder. “Lay back on the couch for me?” Her request is breathless and her eyes are shy. He just nods and slides onto his back.

Her lips roam his body in langorous, delicate strokes. Her nose skims the dip of his sternum and her tongue trails along the ridges of his abs, inching towards his hips.

“Can I suck you off?”

The words set off equal parts heady lust and trepidation. But her face looks so eager and excited that he can't say no. He nods at her and keeps his head craned up to watch.

“I want so badly to know what you feel like,” she tells him as her thumbs press against the sharp cut of his obliques. Her voice is sweet and smokey and the want overtakes his worry.

She teases him, taking her time exploring the inside of his thighs before she slides up, taking his rock hard cock in hand. His head tips back in rapture when she licks a stripe from base to head along a thick vein. Her clever tongue searches out the most sensitive spots along the ridge of his head and his hips buck up of their own accord. Then she plunges her mouth down over him, wrapping her warm palm around the part her lips can't reach. The wet, hot slip of her mouth is like silken friction and he groans out her name, a string of barely coherent curses tumbling from his lips when she sucks harder, hollowing out her ckeeks.

Then her hand closes around his balls, gently, but she holds them both and massages. Memories come flooding back and his throat closes up. He freezes, his veins icy as sensations he never wanted to relive inundate him. Rey's mouth immediately slows and she releases him.

“Ben? What's wrong?” Her voice is so sweetly concerned that it loosens the iron grip of panic around his mind. He just shakes his head sharply, eyes squeezed shut. The mask of pain on his face wrenches her heart. She crawls up the couch, careful not to touch him.

“Ben. You're okay. It's okay. Nothing can hurt you anymore. I'm here.”

Tentatively, she brushes the back of her hand to his cheek. “Ben, come back to me.”

The anguished distress in her voice yanks him out of the horror-reel replaying in his mind. When he opens his eyes, her own hazel ones are brimming with concern.

“I'm sorry,” he chokes out. “I can't-”

“Oh baby, no,” she interrupts him, resting her forehead against his. “Can I hold you?”

He just nods. Her arms slide around him and she pulls his head to her chest. The whoosh of air in and out of her lungs accompanied by the steady thud of her heart become his lifeline, and he latches onto that constant sound like a drowning man. Despite the fact that his frame is massive compared to hers, she still manages to wrap her body around him like a shield. Her hands stroke his hair to the rhythm of her heart and he feels the chaotic terror recede from his body. Muscle by muscle, she can feel him uncoil and relax. Finally, he lets out a long, ragged breath.

“I'm sorry,” she murmurs. “I should have asked. I should have asked what you were okay with.”

He grips her forearms and nestles closer to her. “I wouldn't have known. I didn't think – Rey I'm sorry.”

She twists around until she can see his eyes. “What the hell are you sorry for?”

He swallows. “I should be able to-”

“Fuck _should,_ ” she says with a vehemence that shakes him. “There is nothing wrong with you. I'm not the least bit disappointed or unsatisfied or whatever the fuck you're thinking right now.”

“You're not upset?” He inquires in a tiny, strained voice that makes her heart ache.

“Of course the fuck I'm not,” she says again fiercely. “Is that what's happened in the past? Other partners got upset?”

He nods.

“Well fuck them too,” she growls with an anger in her eyes so hot he can feel it. “That's fucked up, Ben. You deserve better. You did absolutely nothing wrong, at all. There's nothing wrong with you. Okay?” She grabs his cheeks in hand and stares intently into his eyes. “Do you understand? _Nothing._ ”

He can't speak, his voice is stuck somewhere in the rush of gratitude and relief he feels from hearing those words.

She kisses his brow, the ferocity in her voice fading to a strong insistence. “I know I can't fix everything by saying that. I'm not trying to fix you or whatever.”

“It helps,” he rushes to tell her. “It helps a lot.”

“I will never, ever be upset about anything you don't want to do. I won't be upset if you never want me to blow you again. I won't hurt you like that.” _Because I love you._ The words crowd in her mouth even as they shock her. _Shit_ , she thinks. _Fuck, fuck fuck. When did that happen?_ She clenches her jaw shut, certain that if she says anything else, those three words will slip out. So she just continues to card her fingers through his hair, content to listen to his breaths become steady and strong again.

“Thank you,” he says after several minutes pass.

Her heart aches again. “You don't need to thank me. I'm just being a decent human being.”

He laughs once, hard and dry. “Well, there are a lot of non-decent human beings out there. And I'm grateful nonetheless.”

“Alright,” she tells him softly. “In that case, you're welcome. But I want you to know that I don't expect gratitude or thankfulness from you.”

He shifts so he can twine his arms around her too and looks up into her face – so bare and vulnerable and covered with a feeling for him that steals his breath, a feeling he's too afraid to name. “I know.”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> TW scene summary: Rey and Ben begin to kiss and undress. She tells him she wants to suck him off and he says yes. Half way through, it triggers him and he experiences a flashback and panics. She realizes he's not okay and stops right away. She tries to comfort him and they discuss how in the past, partners have blamed him or become upset when he gets triggered during sex. She assures him (very vehemtly), that it's not his fault and she never wants to hurt him or ask him to do something he doesn't want to. She wants to tell him 'I love you' and is shocked when she realizes that.
> 
>  
> 
> Alright, I apologize a bit for that loooong made up excerpt about time travel and whatnot. It's literally mumbo jumbo garbage that's a combination of Donnie Darko, Fringe (I miss Fringe), and actual theories about dimensional interaction from articles I pretend to understand and definitely don't. It was kind of fun to write though. I hope it wasn't too painful to slog through.
> 
> Also I know the end was heavy. I promise I'm not trying to use past abuse as a plot device - I just felt that was a realistic interpretation of what happens sometimes when people who have experienced sexual abuse get into relationships. It can be really hard and difficult to navigate for people on both ends. Also it's a reminder to everyone (and myself) that it's not your fault and if your partner ever, EVER blames you for things that trigger you or gets upset when you don't want to do stuff you're uncomfortable with, then they are a POS and you deserve better. 
> 
> As always, thank you so much for reading and commenting! I love hearing from y'all and I hope you're still enjoying the ride.


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay this is try 2 - I posted and then deleted this chapter because Ao3 was maybe doing funny things and I just wanted to start fresh.

Rey stands in a gloomy field of the lonely, wind-swept moors. In the distance, a small cemetery bordered by a low wrought-iron fence. One solitary figure kneels in front of a grave. Rey crosses into the cemetery and recognizes the figure. Ben.

Joy jumps in her heart – she's far from the manor and if he's here then -

“Ben, what are you doing out here?”

He doesn't look up, doesn't even move his head to indicate he heard her.

“Ben?”

She draws near to his shoulder, bending down to read the inscription on the headstone.

_Rey Niima_

_1999-2018_

_Beloved Friend and-_

She stumbles back a few steps. “ _No._ ”

Ben drags his hand along the cold surface of her grave. A tear drips from his chin and darkens the stone. “I miss you,” he sighs in a raspy murmur. “It wasn't worth it. It wasn't worth it at all. I'd give anything to switch back.” His fist is clenched around a bundle of wildflowers. With one last brush of his hand against the grave, he straightens, leaving the flowers behind.

His eyes stare past her and when Rey reaches out to touch him, he walks through her.

* * *

 

“Rey, Rey!”

She wakes with a gasp to Ben insistently shaking her shoulder, his eyes brimming with worry.

“Ben,” she chokes out, reaching for him. He pulls her into his arms, and his limbs against hers are so blessedly _there._

“I think you were having a nightmare.” He pushes a few strands of hair from her sweaty brow and runs his hand up and down her arm.

“I was dead,” she tells him with a gulp, her heart still racing. “You were alive but I was dead.”

He freezes momentarily before his arm resumes motion. “It was just a dream.”

The passage from Maz Kanata's book pops into her mind. _There's no such thing as just a dream anymore,_ she wants to tell him. But something in his lingering kisses against her hair tells her that he knows.

She wants to cry and shout and throw something. Maz's book scares her more than she will admit and her body feels weighted by this sinking feeling that they're standing at a precipice and Rey is slowly pushing Ben closer and closer to the edge. She sucks in a shaking breath, shoving those worries down as far as possible. She doesn't want to poison their time together with things she can't control

But a nagging voice in her head returns. _What if you can?_ _What if you are damning him to eternity in this void?_ She slams down that voice too, squashing those thoughts as hard as possible.

“You should eat something,” Ben murmurs, breaking into her thoughts. He lets out a half-chuckle. “I wish I could make you pancakes. I made really good pancakes.”

She rolls away from him and forces a smile. “I'm a terrible cook. I can't even fry an egg without messing it up. So it's toast for me again.”

She pulls on a ratty sweater and pads downstairs, checking her email as she waits for her bread to brown.

“Dr. Kanata already responded!” She exclaims to Ben. She scans the email eagerly and her eyes widen. “She wants to Skype, tomorrow. What should I tell her?”

He motions in a _get on with it_ kind of wave.

Excitement thrills in her middle. Maybe Maz will have answers. Good answers. Maz said she's in New York, so Rey tells her that the afternoon and evening is fine, even if it's late. She's keen to talk to her, and she finds a nervous energy buzzing in her limbs after she sends the email.

“I want to find the tape recorder today,” she says, more of a statement than a suggestion.

Ben's lips press together and puff out with a swallow. “Okay. Let's do it.”

She crosses the kitchen and leans on her tiptoes to kiss him.

* * *

 

They tromp through the fields of the manor property. Rey tries not to trip over the frozen dips and lumps of the ground while Ben moves unhindered, the wind not even lifting his hair. The closer they draw to the border, the more stiff he gets. His eyes continually skitter across the fields in the direction of Snoke's home, even though it's barely more than a speck at the top of a long hill. She grasps his hand in her own covered one, and her tight grip steadies him.

Rey pushes the decrepit door of the shed open gingerly, checking the rafters for bats or owls. She finds only drifting snow from the empty patches of the decaying roof. Even in the cold, the musty smell of the dying structure fills her nose. Ben hovers around her, wishing he could do something should part of the shed collapse.

“I'll be careful,” she promises him, picking up on his nervousness. “Where do I look?”

He points to a pile of ragged tarps and rusting garden equipment near the back wall. Rey drags them away with some effort, revealing a small trap door. She pulls open the door as carefully as possible and peers down. A narrow ladder leads into the space below, the bottom obscured in darkness. She steels herself with a set jaw and begins her descent, too focused on moving from one rung to the next to notice Ben's pinched features. The fifth rung down feels spongy and a second later it crumbles under her weight. Her thick mittens impede her grasp and her hands slip from the ladder, sending her tumbling to the ground.

“Rey!” Ben's voice is thick with panic when she hits the packed earth with an audible thump. She lands ever so slightly on her left side. The impact knocks the wind out of her lungs and she feels a burst of pain in the back of her skull that sends stars across her vision. Above her Ben flickers and then reappears at her side and she flinches.

She finally sucks some air into her lungs. “I'm fine,” she wheezes. “Just a little head bump.”

His gaze darts to the protruding rock she landed on and his narrowed eyes tell her he doesn't believe a word of it. “You need to get back to the house.” He scoops a hand under her shoulders and helps her sit up. Her vision swims and pain lances through her head. “No,” she insists. “We're down here, I want to get it.”

His mouth twists, the conflict plain on his face.

“I'm _fine,_ ” she repeats. She pulls her legs under her and lurches to her feet, ignoring the way her vision warps again and the black that tingles at the edges of her consciousness. “Alright, where is it?”

Ben points to a second pile of junk – this time, a broken chair and a dirt-crusted bucket holding some small shovels. He kneels down next to her as she moves the items, exposing a small crawl space.

“Hux and I dug out a little tunnel and tiny room at the end,” he says with a weak smile. “It took us two summers. We used to hide in it when we wanted to avoid Snoke.”

She studies his face. “What happened to Hux?”

He picks at the threads of his jeans. “I actually told him I was going to confront Snoke. I wanted him to come with me. I hadn't spoken to him for like five years until that call. He didn't go with me, and that was the last time we talked.”

Rey wants to say something, but first and foremost she wants to get back to the house. Her head has turned into a painful, throbbing mess and she swallows against nausea. She's almost positive she has a concussion. _Recorder first,_ she reminds herself. _For Ben._

She crawls into the tiny space, dropping to her stomach to wriggle through the passage when it grows alarmingly narrow. On the other end is a claustrophobic dug-out, barely large enough for two young boys. If she was any wider, she wouldn't fit in here. There's nothing in the room except a tiny tackle box, just like Ben said. She snatches the box and begins to scooch backwards, yelping when Ben grabs her legs and drags her the rest of the way.

She holds up the dirty box triumphantly. “Got it!” She pops open the latch and takes out the top compartment. In the bottom space is an old-fashioned tape recorder without a single layer of dust. She turns it around in her hands before she finds the right button. It clicks and the faint hum of tape static plays. Her thumb comes off the button and she turns to Ben. “Can I play it?”

The turmoil in his eyes gives her the answer. “I'll wait,” she says softly.

He looks at her with a grateful smile, but it grows unfocused as her vision fuzzes. “Rey?” His features sharpen again, now inches from hers.

“I might have lied about my head,” she admits with a wince. She staggers when she stands and Ben immediately catches her.

“I'm afraid to try and take you up,” he says, frustration tightening his eyes. “You're going to have to climb up yourself. But I'll be at the bottom until you get there.”

He guides her to the ladder and she forces her limbs to move, one rung at a time. When she reaches the broken rung, the world spins as she tries to pull herself up and fails. Within a second, Ben's hands close around her forearms from above and he pulls her up like she weighs nothing. He immediately swings her into his arms, carrying her bridal-style all the way back to the house.

* * *

 

Rey lays curled up on her side, head in Ben's lap as they sit on the couch. She holds a makeshift ice pack against her head, which now sports a visible, tender lump.

Ben stares at the recorder where it sits on the coffee table like it's a coiled snake. Finally, he speaks, his words strained. “What are you going to do with it?”

“I'm going to drop it off with the police on my way out of town, along with a nice, long letter.” The words _on my way out_ burn in her throat like she's inhaled smoke. She can tell from his rigid stillness that they hurt him too.

She struggles for the remote on the table. “I want to watch some Queer Eye.”

He spares her an absent minded smile, but it doesn't reach his eyes.

“What is it?” She prods, her own smile slipping.

He eases her out of his lap and props her up against the couch. His eyes are the cold dark of a lifeless forest in winter.

“Ben,” she whispers.

“We can't do this,” he responds after a moment, his resonant voice unfairly soft and intimate.

She clenches her jaw and shakes her head once, blinking away sudden tears. “I get it. You've been alone for years and then I come along and it's the perfect thing to scratch that itch -”

“Don't,” he growls at her, and the bitter vehemence in his voice stops her in her tracks. “That's not it at all.”

She finds his eyes again; the cold is long gone and the tender liquid depths engulf her wholly, teasing out the words that have been hiding in her heart for days.

“Ben, I'm falling in love with you.”

His chest hitches and something golden and mesmerizing flashes in his eyes, before a blank look slides over them.

Immediately, Rey's heart plummets, her insides crushed. “I understand if you don't feel the same way,” she hurries to assure him. “I just thought, well, with the way things have been, I felt like there is something -”

“There _is_ something,” he interrupts her. “Rey,” -he tips her chin up with one finger - “I'm in love with you too.”

Her heart thrums loudly and she can't stop the dizzy grin that sweeps across her face. “You are?”

He sighs heavily. “Yes,” he admits again, but his voice is threaded with remorse.

Her grin falters. “You don't sound happy about it.”

He huffs and shoves away from the couch, dragging a hand through his hair. “Rey, I'm dead!”

She doesn't know what to say, she can't exactly disagree.

“Watch.” He blinks out of sight and reappears on the other side of the couch. In another blink, he flickers back to his first spot. He swings his arm towards the coffee table and it sinks through in one smooth motion, all the way to the floor. “I'm not really here. We can't – this can't work.”

“Why not,” she whispers stubbornly.

His jaw hangs open. “Well for starters, you'd have to come here to see me since I can't leave, so good luck explaining that to my parents or just generally figuring that out. You can't tell anyone about me, I can never be a real part of your life. We can't ever do normal things like get married, have kids, travel. I'll just stay like this while you get older and older. If you get sick or stuck somewhere or need help like today, I can't help you. I can't do _anything_. And if you _do_ try to explain this situation to anyone, they'll think you're nuts and lock you up in a mental hospital, or put you on meds and turn you into a zombie. I can hold you and kiss you but I can't cook you pancakes for breakfast or unzip your dress when you're stuck, we can't take nighttime drives just for the hell of it. I can't pick you flowers or take out our trash or put a ring on your finger.” His voice breaks and the resulting silence is punctuated by the patter of Rey's tears against her lap. She cranes her neck up and spares him a trembling look. “You want all of that? Truly?”

He crouches next to her and drags her gently onto his lap, tucking her under his chin. “I want all of that so badly it feels like the wanting might kill me.”

She snorts wetly. “That's not funny,” she rasps, and he almost chuckles. Her voice drops. “You've really thought this through.”

He sighs. “Yeah, I guess so.”

She clutches desperately at him, already knowing her answer. There's no other thing she could say. “I don't care, Ben.”

“You will.”

She shoves away from him. “Stop telling me how I'm going to feel. You don't get to decide that. What are you going to do, send me away?”

Behind the sadness, his lip twitches in the kind of smirk she saw the first time they met for real. Then his expression grows serious. “No, I'm not.” He holds his arms out to her again, a silent plea for her to return. “I'll take you for as long as you'll have me,” he confesses. “I'm too selfish to say no.”

“Good,” she says. “Because I'll be here.” She looks up at him, searching his eyes. “I'll be here until everything falls apart, and probably for a while after that.” She smiles crookedly, half a sob catching in her throat.

She kisses him then, trying to chase away the bitter tang of sorrow those words left on their lips.

* * *

 

Rey and Ben lay about all of the next day, mostly for Rey's sake, but also because Maz said she would call sometime late that afternoon.

The tone of an incoming Skype call interrupts their movie. Rey jumps up too fast and the world spins a little. Ben wraps his arm around her immediately, not letting go until she's settled in a chair. She takes a deep breath and accepts the call.

While the picture on Maz's website made her look frail and shrunken, Rey can tell from the way she holds herself now that her spindly frame belies wiry muscles and a surprising strength. But her saucer-plate eyes look even larger in real life.

Rey's nerves make her stumble through the introduction. “Nice to um, meet you Dr. Kanata. I'm Rey.”

“Please, call me Maz.”

Rey attempts a tepid smile and nods.

The aged professor wastes no time in getting to the point.

“So, you have a ghost, eh?”

Rey confirms with another nod.

“You called him 'your ghost,' in the email.” Even over Skype, Maz's eyes uncomfortably probe and Rey feels exposed.

She titters nervously. “Yeah, I guess I did.”

Maz harrumphs and leans back in her chair. “Explain the situation with as little detail as possible, initially. I need to asses your status.”

“There's a man here. I'm almost positive he was murdered nearby. We're in his family home, where he grew up.”

“How long has he been dead?”

“Six years.”

“Can you see or hear him?”

Rey nods, “Yes, both.”

“Can he interact with the physical world?”

She shakes her head slowly. “Not really. He's aware of the boundaries but he can't pick anything up or move objects.” She hesitates and glances up at Ben, who nods in encouragement.

“But _I_ can touch him,” she adds in a small voice.

Maz's owl-eyes somehow grow even wider and she adjusts her thick glasses as she leans closer to the screen. “You can _touch_ him,” she repeats.

“Yes.”

Her words now carry a hint of urgency. “How consistently? What does it feel like?”

Rey's eyes flutter shut briefly as Ben's thumb traces circles in the curve where neck and shoulder meet. “All the time. He feels real, like he's really here. I can even feel his clothes.”

Maz's lips press into a thin line. “Has it always been like this?”

She chews her lip. “No. When he first – when I found him, he only appeared for minutes at a time. We couldn't touch, not truly. It felt like, an energy that passed between us.” She leans the side of her head against Ben's forearm, taking solace in his warmth. “Now, he's always here.”

An excited gleam fills Maz's eyes. “He's there now?”

Rey just nods.

The gleam bleeds away, overcome by professional wisdom. “I don't want to know anymore details. I already know too much as it is. If this is a parallel universe interaction, knowing more will just further tie these events together.”

Rey's voice is hoarse and desperate when she responds. “What should I do?”

Maz sighs with a sad smile. “Dear child, I see your eyes. You already know the truth. You know what you should do. I also know you won't do it.”

A solitary tear escapes and races down Rey's cheek. “I can't,” she chokes out. She tips her head up to meet Ben's gaze and plunges headlong into their sable honey depths. Her own are both pleading and bold. “I love him,” she whispers. His eyes become never-ending lightening, searing and brilliant. His chin trembles.

Maz's grave expression seems crowded with questions as she studies Rey's face, but she doesn't voice any of them. “Thank you for contacting me Rey. Although extremely risky, this is an interesting case. If anything...significant happens, please email me.”

Rey forces a grateful smile. “I appreciate the help.”

“Have a good day, Ms. Niima. Wish your ghost a good day too for me.”

Just before Maz can disconnect, Rey lunges forward. “Wait! Dr. Kanata, what's going to happen?”

She slowly shakes her head. “The future is uncertain, and I do not want to be dishonest. Whatever happens, I don't think it will be good.”

They bid each other goodbye and the call ends. Ben immediately crouches at her side and pulls her close. The emotions Rey has been forcing down for days roar up, too strong for her to resist – the tidal wave of anguish and despair and mind-numbing fear crushes her and she breaks into wracking sobs. Ben doesn't know what to say, so he just holds her, his own limbs shaking with the weight of his own pain.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Im SORRY. pain, so much pain. I promise there is some good fluff in the next chapter.
> 
> I'm overwhelmed by the thoughtful responses I've gotten to this fic. You guys have such interesting and creative theories that are definitely more sophisticated than mine, haha. I've really enjoyed reading them and I'm anxious (and excited) to find out what you all think when the mystery finally unravels :0 
> 
> Thank you so much for reading! <3


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The penultimate chapter!! I'm super excited to post this one. You'll notice the chapter count has gone down by 2. I originally planned for more frequent, shorter chapters, but since I started putting them up in longer chunks, we've burned through the story faster and I just never updated the chapter count. There maaaayyy be an epilogue, but I'm not set on it yet.

They spend the rest of the day laying in Rey's bed in a glum, stilted silence. She's curled against him and he holds her cautiously, trying to avoid touching anything that hurts. Her head still throbs from the day before and her back and sides ache. “I think I might have cracked a few ribs,” she tells him. “Or at least badly bruised them. They're really starting to hurt. Hurts when I breathe.”

“You need to go to a doctor,” he says, worry already crowding his voice.

“They won't be able to do anything,” she argues. “Besides, I don't want to drive with my head like this.”

His fingers dig into her arm ever so slightly.

“Don't do that,” she says. “Don't hate yourself for not being able to drive me to the doctor or whatever.”

“I can't help it.” His words are clipped and tight. “I feel useless.”

She just pulls him closer even though the movement sets off a new wave of pain. She finds herself fighting tears again. Maz was her last hope. Leia would return in 10 days and that number blinks red and urgent in Rey's head like the countdown of a detonator. Their dark Eden will be stripped away from them and she'll be left with countless impossible choices, and Ben will be more helpless than ever. The dread has become a tangible thing, ruining the taste of her food, screaming into the silence, weighing down on her like lead.

* * *

 

The next morning, Ben is absent, as usual. But the hours pass and Rey can't find him. He doesn't show up after breakfast or lunch. And as the sun begins to dip behind the horizon, she finds herself twisted in her sheets, face wet with perpetual tears, and a new kind of panic in her chest. What if he's avoiding her because of what Maz said? What if he's changed his mind and he's trying to soften the blow of her departure?

Her hiccuping, muffled cries aggravate her head and her bruised ribs. She welcomes the pain – anything to distract her from the empty space on the couch, in her bed, between her arms.

She slowly cries herself into exhaustion and begins to drift into sleep, feeling wrung out and ragged. Just as her eyes slide shut, Ben's form blinks to life next to her bed.

“Ben,” she croaks, propping herself up on her elbows. “Where have you been?”

He blinks at her, brow furrowed. “What do you mean?”

“You've been gone all day.”

He glances at the window and the desolate night greets him. His features darken and fear crosses his face. “I didn't – I have no idea. Rey?” Her name is a protest and an explanation, begging her to understand, and begging her to reassure him.

She wishes she could offer him safety or calm but she can't. “What's happening?”

He doesn't have answers for her.

She tugs him close, desperate for lips on hers. She traces the seam of his mouth, asking for him to open to her. He does, and she delves deeper, licking along the sides of his tongue, eliciting a soft moan from him. The vibration of it hums through her body, lighting a soft burn between her legs. She hurries out of her clothes, desperate for the silk of his skin. She fists his shirt and the soft rub of the fabric under her hands makes it so much easier for her to lie to her own mind, to successfully pull off the deception of believing he is _here._

He flips her onto her stomach to take the pressure off her injured ribs and tender head. With feather movement, he claims every inch of her unbruised skin with his mouth, skimming along the ridges of her hips, grazing against her supple breasts in a way that makes her whine for more. She pulls away from him after a moment, regretfully, and turns around to see his face. “Do you want to have sex?”

“Yes,” he responds without hesitation.

“Is there anything you don't want me to do or touch?”

His lip catches in his teeth. He's afraid to even say it lest the memories assault him again. “What happened last time,” he says, stuttering. “Just don't recreate that.”

She nods slowly, eyes hooded. They meet, chest to chest. He sits on his heels and pulls her into his lap, gripping her thighs and hips for leverage. “How does this feel?” He inquires. “Painful?”

She shakes her head and grinds her wet slit against his hard cock, both gasping at the friction.

“I just want to feel you inside me,” she sighs against his mouth. He tenderly kisses her cheek and obliges, sliding his solid length inside her. He groans and his eyes flutter shut. “You're so wet, so tight and wet.”

They move together in a slow, languid dance, as she rolls her hips up to meet his rocking thrusts. Their gazes lock and their breath falls into sync. His pupils are blown so wide she can barely see color. The intensity of his dark, heated eyes burns into her, igniting a different kind of fire inside her body. She clings to his shoulders, luxuriating in the feel of his skin yielding to her.

Time ceases meaning and the universe narrows to just them. Their union isn't about pleasure anymore – it's two starving souls searching for their safe haven. Ben's insides are raw and ragged but she feels like a healing magic he could only dream of. Rey is terrified – to be this close, for her heart to be so naked and exposed, but he cradles it gently, promising never to abandon her. With their bodies entwined, matching each other motion for motion, breath for breath, it feels as though her soul bleeds into his.

They don't break eye contact, not when they both quake and their breaths come in ragged gasps, and not when Rey's vision whites out and they both cry out each others names, swept into a completion more powerful than they've ever felt. He nuzzles her face as they come down, pressing raindrop-gentle kisses along her brow and cheeks, finally settling on her lips. They don't want to move, so they just stay there and exist as a single creature until Ben disappears.

* * *

 

To Rey's delight, Ben is laying in her bed when she wakes the next day.

“Good morning, beautiful,” he murmurs, nuzzling her. She huddles against him to avoid the sudden snap of cold weather that permeates the house.

“I could get used to this,” she mumbles and he freezes. _Oh no,_ she berates herself. That was the wrong thing to say. He pointedly ignores the statement.

“How are you feeling?”

She gingerly probes the lump on the back of her head that's finally receding. “Still got a headache, but it's not too bad.”

“Your ribs?” His voice carries a gentle protectiveness that fills her with a peculiar warmth.

“They still hurt, not much less than yesterday.”

He hums, clearly unsatisfied with her answer. She suspects he'll be unhappy until she's fully recovered.

“There's supposed to be another giant storm today and tomorrow. Record snowfalls,” she informs him.

“I know, it's already started.”

She leans back to look at his face. “How long have you been here?”

“Not long,” he assures her. “Definitely not all night. I don't think I'd stay even if I could. It's kind of creepy to watch someone sleep.”

“I guess,” she concedes. She doesn't want to tell him that she will take every second with him that she can, even if she's not conscious for all of it.

“I'm going to make cookies today,” she declares.

A playful smile dances around his eyes. “Are you going to eat them all by yourself?”

“Absolutely,” she grins back. “Maybe I'll share some with Emily.”

As Rey flits around the kitchen, she resolves not to think about anything dark or gloomy for the entire day. She wants just one day where she doesn't cry. She's getting really tired of crying.

She puts on a Spotify playlist of cheerful holiday music and her and Ben play made up games while she bakes. They start out tame while she makes the first batch, but every smile and floating laugh she elicits from Ben tastes like pure sugar and she chases it, determined to draw as much joy from the next several hours as she can.

Rey cracks eggs into a bowl, thinking of her next move. “Okay, when I was in like fifth grade, I went into the men's bathroom at the airport. I realized immediately and turned around, but as soon as I left this group of people in the customs line start shouting and waving at me like 'you went into the wrong bathroom! That's the men's bathroom!' As if I didn't already know that. _Everyone_ around was staring at me.”

Ben's face doesn't so much as twitch. “That's not that bad, we've all done that.”

Rey rolls her eyes as she stirs her bowl. “Fine, your turn then.”

He gives her a crooked smile and leans back in the chair. “7th grade science presentation. I was supposed to say 'organisms.'”

She fights a smile off her face, knowing exactly where his story is going.

“But of course, I say orgasms. In front of a class of 20 sweaty, pre-pubescent teenagers. I can feel myself turning red. So the next time I have to say organisms, what do I say again? Orgasms. I said it 5 more times. Eventually I just gave up. I stopped mid-sentence, said 'the end,' and sat down. I was Orgasm Boy for the rest of the year.”

The story is pretty funny, but it's Ben's smile that's infectious, and Rey can't stop the laughter bubbling up. It catches in her lungs and she curses, hand flying to her ribs.

His eyes widen in realization. “This is not the game we should be playing right now.”

She waves him off. “I'm fine. Besides, the point is _not_ to laugh, so as long as I win, I'm fine. And it's 4 for 2 right now. You'd better catch up, Solo.”

He snickers at her. “If your next story is as weak as your last one, then I'm fine.”

“Hey!” She resists the urge to throw a handful of flour at him, but she doesn't want to watch it drift through his frame. _No gloomy thoughts!_ She reminds herself. She jumps into her next story. “Alright. It's my first week at the Resistance. I'm on a creeper under this old pickup that's dripping oil and engine fluid everywhere. I can't tell where it's coming from, it doesn't make any sense. Some of it drips into my face and it gets all around my mouth _and_ in it, so I'm spitting everywhere and swearing and trying to wipe it off with my sleeve, which is just smearing more grime around. And right as that's happening I hear Holdo come into the shop and yell at me to come out 'cause there's someone she wants me to meet.” Rey gestures wildly, miming her story as it happens and she can already see the smirk tugging at the corner of Ben's mouth. “So I roll myself out, but my hair snags on something and so there's more swearing and shouting. I finally get out, spit and oil all over my face, my hair's in my eyes. Holdo's there with this woman I've never seen before and they're both trying not to laugh. I'm struggling to get up so the woman gives me a hand, except I step on the edge of the creeper instead of the floor. I fall back, the creeper goes flying, knocks the woman off her feet, and _she_ falls on top of me right as I elbow her smack dab in the eye. And as she goes down she tries to grab the hood of the truck, except _someone -_ to this day I don't know who _–_ left an open pan of old oil on top of the car. So instead she grabs the oil. It hits her right in the face, drenching both of us.” Ben's shoulders are shaking with barely suppressed laughter and Rey grins. “Holdo can't keep it together, she's not helping at _all._ This lady and I finally untangle ourselves and stand up. We're just disgusting. Her eye is already swelling from my elbow jab. Well, guess who the woman was?”

“Oh no,” Ben gasps.

Now even Rey is struggling not to laugh. “YOUR MUM.”

He busts out laughing, loud enough to scare off Emily, and Rey starts giggling, alternating with winces as pain shoots through her rib cage.

“Holdo finally says 'Rey, I'd like you to meet Leia Organa, Executive Director of the Resistance.' I almost fainted. Every part of me that wasn't covered in oil is bright red. Your mum sticks out her hand for a shake and I honestly can't remember if I actually took it.” Rey's laughing almost as hard as Ben now, trying to eek out the rest of her story between gasps that are equal part mirth and pain. “She looks me right in the eye and says 'We will never speak of this again.' Then she leaves.”

Ben's laughing so hard he can't breathe, let alone talk. After several minutes of uncontrollable laughter, he shakes his head. “I forfeit. There's no way I'm topping that. You win.”

Rey abandons her cookies and saunters to his side. “Lucky for you, I'm a gracious winner.” She kisses him soundly and he tugs her into his lap. After a few minutes of breathless, sloppy kisses, Rey pulls away with a sniff. Her eyes fly wide. “Oh shit! The first batch of cookies in the oven.” She stumbles off his lap and opens the oven door to a rush of smoke. She immediately turns the oven off and slams the door shut again.

“Well those cookies are fucked,” she announces. She's met with silence. She turns around to see Ben's spot empty. “Goddammit,” she growls, “not again.” She's more pissed than sad at the moment, furious that the universe is bent on ruining her tear-free day. She wanders through a few rooms calling for him to no avail. She quickly gives up and returns to the kitchen, only hoping that he'll show up again soon. Suddenly the cheery music that fills the air and the festive sprinkles and frosting cluttered on the counter seem like they're mocking her. _You thought you could be a normal couple?_ They seemed to laugh. _Ha! Never._

A massive gust of wind howls against the house and Rey looks outside at the swirling blizzard and gasps. She runs to the window, pressing her face against the glass. “Holy shit! There's a horse out there!” The horse wanders aimlessly in the snow up the steep front lawn. She curses again and stomps away to pull on her coat and gloves, but she can't find her winter boots. “Fuck it,” she says, shoving her feet into her pair of worn and sagging 'riding boots' that clearly were made for fashion over function. She struggles to push the door open against a gust of wind and once she's outside, she struggles to stay upright in the snow with her slippery shoes. She trudges through the snow to the horse. “Oye! Whatcha you doing out here, hmm?”

The horse whickers and walks towards her. She grabs his halter, pulling it down to read the engraved tag on the side.

_Coldsworn Manor_

“Fuck!” Rey exclaims, startling the horse. Coldsworn was Snoke's house. She let out a quieter stream of curses, evaluating the horse. There isn't a barn or building nearby to keep the horse in overnight, excluding Ben's old shed, but she's certain this wind and snow will just bring it down on the animal's head. She briefly considers letting the horse go. It's not her fault if Snoke can't take care of his own animals.

The horse turns his head to look at her, a trusting gentleness in his liquid brown eyes. “Motherfucker,” she swears at it. She can't let it die out here. “You son of a bitch. Fine, I'll bring you back.”

She tugs the horse across the lawn to the end of the driveway. Nearly at the bottom, she suddenly sees Ben striding towards her from the house, unhindered by the snow. Surprised, she tugs on the halter to pull the horse back around towards Ben to meet him halfway, calling out his name. He doesn't hear her. As she draws closer, the blowing snow thins and she notices the area around him shows patches of green grass sprinkled with autumn leaves instead of snow and ice. Sunlight glints in his raven hair. Confusion snarls her thoughts. She continues to shout his name as she jogs towards him, horse in tow.

They're nearly to a meeting point, but when she sees the phone pressed against his ear, she stops short. “I'm going to do it, Hux!” Ben tells the person on the other end. “I'm going to confront him right now. I'm on the way. You can come with me if you want. I'm going to the police right after. They can protect you!”

He listens to the response, but apparently Hux says something he doesn't like. “Hux, please!” Ben pleads. “This is your chance to get free. Hux?” He pulls the phone away and realizes Hux hung up on him. “Fuck!”

He walks right past Rey even as she shouts his name, who grows more confused by the second. Then she realizes what he's wearing. Black jeans with a rip in one knee, a v-neck sweater, and classic Van sneakers. The back of his head is missing the tell-tale gash and gore.

Her heart drops as everything slides into place. “No,” she breathes, a chill deeper than any winter stealing into her limbs. “No, no, no, BEN!” She starts to run after him, trying to cut him off. She has to tell him. She has to tell him more than she did before. Maybe she can fix it. Maybe she can save him.

She chases him down the driveway. “Ben!”

Her cries finally reach him. His head jerks up and he spins around, seeing her for the first time. His eyes fly open, taking in her snow-laden hair and bulky clothes. “Who – who are you?”

“Rey,” she answers sharply, through a panting breath, knowing she can't forget that crucial piece. “Listen to me Ben, please leave! You have to leave. Don't go to Snoke's. Don't confront him. _Please.”_

She can see confused thoughts swirling around in his eyes, but his face hardens. “I have to do this. Who are you? How do you know who I am? How do you know about Snoke?”

She screams in frustration and icy tears prick her eyes. “Please just trust me, stay away from him.”

Ben resolutely shakes his head, then rubs his eyes. “I'm imagining things. You're not real!”

Angry, hot tears slide down her cheeks. “Ben,” she begs through a sob. “Please. If you have to go, then hide that recorder as soon as you leave and _run._ Run as far away as you can, he's going to kill you! Snoke murders you!”

Ben vanishes mid-word, and she's left staring at the empty road covered in drifting snow. “No,” she cries, dropping to her knees. “No, no.” More tears spill over and freeze on her wind-chapped cheeks.

A shadow emerges from the swirling white. “Who are you talking to, my dear?”

Rey gasps and jumps to her feet when she hears Snoke's grating voice. He stands in the road, almost exactly where Ben just was.

“Take your fucking horse back,” she snarls at him. “Get control of your animals.”

She releases the horse's halter and the animal shies away from Snoke, making a dash to the left towards the road.

Snoke's wrinkled face curls into a sickening smile. “Oh yes, my horse, who seems to have escaped the locked stable in the middle of a blizzard and somehow found his way here.”

Rey blanches when she realizes what she's done, and turns to run towards the house, but she can't get traction in her stupid treadless boots and they slip out from under her.

He grins at her then, a leering, knowing grimace that displays a mouthful of yellowed, crooked teeth. He takes a step closer, and too late, Rey notices the crowbar in his hand. “I just needed to get you out of that house.”

She gasps again and crawls backwards, slipping on the ground.

“Oh my dear Rey, you already know what's coming.” He raises the crowbar and swings. She lurches away, but he still clips her head, splitting open a deep slash across her hairline. The blow reignites a dull throb in the base of her skull. Blood immediately pours out of the gash. It stings when it hits her eyes and hinders her vision. She turns to run towards the house, trying to wipe blood out of her eyes as she goes, but the world is tilted every so slightly, so when she slips on the ground again she goes straight down.

Snoke's next blow is a hard kick to her left side, directly into her bruised ribs. Rey hears a crack and a sharp pain pierces her chest, sharper than ever before. She rolls onto her right side just in time to catch Snoke's next kick in both hands. She yanks as hard as she can and he topples over. She crawls to her feet and limps off, gasping for air even as each breath grows more excruciating.

His boot on her back tosses her forward and she scrapes her cheek raw against the gravel road. Her lip catches on her teeth and splits. She spits blood and rolls onto her back just as Snoke's crowbar comes down. She screams in rage and catches it in her hands, but this time she slams the bar towards his face. It crunches into his nose, but not before he kicks her right elbow, hyper extending it with a loud pop. She shrieks and her arm flops down like a marionette without a string. He straightens, cradling his broken nose and _laughs_ , cold and dry. “You don't go down as easily as I thought you would. Full of fire, you are.” He uses his shoulder to wipe blood off his chin.

Rey curls around her now useless arm, gritting her teeth against cries of pain. “Why are you doing this?”

He chortles. “Don't play coy with me, Ms. Niima. I saw you go into that shed. You and that ghostly boy of yours. Really, why can't the dead just stay dead? It wasn't hard to guess what you took out with you. It was a favorite hide-out of his as a child, and there's no reason you would ever need to go in there.”

“How?” She hisses, trying to distract him and buy herself time to gather enough energy to run away.

He taps the crowbar thoughtfully against his palm. “You know, my manor is up on a large hill. I can see for miles and miles. It was very easy to spot a girl accompanied by a boy who hasn't been in the country for the last 6 years.”

She pauses, blinking in confusion. _Wait -_ _What did he just say?_ “You won't get away with this.” She struggles awkwardly to her knees, dragging one leg under her at a time.

Snoke stalks closer, a triumphant gleam in his watery eyes. He pushes her over with one foot. “Oh, but I already have.” His leg comes down on her thigh with more force than she ever believed a decrepit old man capable of. She hears a snap and pain _explodes_ through her. She screams then, full out, until it dies in her raw throat.

* * *

 

Ben exists again, only to find himself facing an empty kitchen. He strides through the house, calling for Rey, but she's nowhere to be found. As he passes a front window, two figures out in the blowing snow catch his attention. The wind dies just long enough to afford him a clear look. It's Rey. And _Snoke_. Fury flushes his veins and he lets out a ragged banshee screem, just to release some of the pressure building in his chest. Then Snoke swings at Rey with what looks like a crowbar and it strikes her forehead. Ben finds himself paralyzed. Rey tries to get away but she wipes out. Snoke kicks her in the side and the sight of her curled up in pain knocks him out of his stupor. Ben screams again, crossing the room to pass through the opposite wall. He doesn't know what he could possibly do, but he has to try something.

Three steps from the wall, his stride falters. A force crashes into him with an energy so hard it knocks him to his hands and knees. He can't move, can't breathe, he can't even think. The energy crackles over his body and Ben feels like he did when he jumped into a frigid lake in the dead of winter as a child. It dissipates, leaving him shuddering and gasping in its wake. His veins tingle with remnant energy, like numb limbs waking up. And then everything rushes to him at once.

His knees ache where he hit the floor. _His knees ache._ He stares at the ground, struggling to comprehend. He can feel the ridge of an uneven floorboard pressing into his palm. He can smell the traces of the cookies Rey burned. Emily appears beside him with a happy chirp and rubs up against his arm, purring. He immediately reaches for the back of his head, expecting to feel the familiar squish of blood and oozing brain matter. But he finds only waves of soft hair atop a smooth, unblemished scalp. _How how how_ his mind chants, and then _REY._

He scrambles back to the window. Rey still lays in the snow and Snoke looms over her, gesturing with his crowbar. If Snoke is talking then Rey is still alive. He reaches for the doorknob even as all his instincts tell him it won't work. But his hand lands on the cool metal and he yanks it open. The cold smacks him in the face and leaves an icy burn in his lungs. He hardly has a moment to marvel at it, his gaze locking in on Rey and Snoke. He jogs through the snow as fast as he dares in his sneakers, aware that a single misstep could send him tumbling to the ground, wasting valuable time.

Snoke stomps on Rey's leg and he hears the snap of bone. Ben makes a decision. The monster will not walk away from this. Death spares no man and today Ben is going to give it a little help.

* * *

 

 

Rey lays in the snow, blood still gushing from the gash along her scalp and various scrapes and cuts on her face. The warm blood quickly cools in sticky layer after layer, gumming up her eyes. The pain of her broken bones and dislocated elbow merges into a wave so intense she can't even cry out anymore. The edges of her vision slowly grow darker like a fatal vignette closing in on her. From one blood-caked eyelid, she watches him loom above, crowbar in hand. Her dream comes rushing back – Ben alive, her dead. It wasn't a dream, it was the future, or at least _a future_. This is it. Snoke is going to kill her. Just like he'd killed Ben and just like he'd probably kill Hux someday.

Suddenly Snoke straightens and gasps with delight. “Why Ben, so glad you could join us! I knew you must still be lurking around. Of course I was off to find you next, but now is as good of a time as any.”

“Ben,” Rey mouths, barely able to make a sound. She strains her head to follow Snoke's line of vision. Ben strides through the lawn, the wind blowing his hair wildly around his face. His shoes crunch on the ice. His breath fogs in the air. There is murder in his eyes.

Snoke grins at him, sweeping his crowbar towards Rey like a magician with a wand. “Have you come to watch your girlfriend die?”

“No, Snoke,” Ben growls. “I've come to watch you die.”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> !!!!!!  
>  I've been dying to post this chapter for so long because I love Ben rolling in like the dark knight we know he is, all murdery and ready to save Rey. 
> 
> Alright so things have been revealed! Kind of? I'd love to hear your theories and thoughts! <3


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Im so sorry for the long wait! You'll see the chapter count went up again - I decided to split the last chapter so I can tie up some loose ends and add a short epilogue. Work has been bad the last week and I just went through a rough break up so writing kind of went to the bottom of the list. Also I'm sorry about the many typos I'm sure are there. I don't have a beta so I miss things a lot. 
> 
> Thank you everyone for reading and commenting, it means the world to me.

Snoke's hand reaches into his jacket for something, but before he can grab it, Ben's arm crashes into his head in a right hook, hitting with enough force that Rey can hear Snoke's neck crack. He collapses to the ground, barely managing to catch himself on his hands. Without breaking stride, Ben snatches the crowbar away and brings it down on Snoke's back in a series of rapid, hard blows. He falls to the ground and Ben kicks him in the ribs, in the same place Snoke kicked Rey. Ben kicks him again, sending him flying over onto his back. Ben snaps the bar down on his head, mimicking the blow he gave her. Snoke struggles for breaths, each inhale rattling in his lungs. Ben bares his teeth in an animal grin, his eyes wild and feral. He stomps down on both of Snoke's legs, one at a time, clenching his jaw as each femur snaps under the weight.

Ben raises the bar for a death blow and Rey barely lifts a halting hand. “Wait Ben, wait!” He pauses out of confusion.

She gathers everything in her to roll onto her good arm so she can see Snoke's face. “Is Ben Solo dead?”

Snoke chortles in some kind of darkly amused wheeze. “Of course not, he's right there!”

Rey's blood ignites with a strange kind of hope. “You never killed Ben Solo?”

“No, although not for a lack of trying. You barely escaped my grasp,” he informs Ben with an admonishing waggle of his finger. “I was foolish, I came after you with a crowbar instead of a shotgun.” He laughs again but it sounds like choking. “My dear Ben, it seems Rey is suffering from brain damage already. I wonder how much of her will be left in 5 minutes? Or 20?”

Ben roars wordlessly at him and looks to her for permission. “Rey?”

She nods weakly and flops back onto the snow. She can't deny Ben this.

Ben brings the bar down on Snoke's skull again and again with a thick crunch, sending chunks of skin and hair flying into the air. The sound of the crunch shifts into a crack, like the twist of a knife after it's breached the rind of a melon. “You will not take anything else from me,” Ben screams. The crowbar cracks through his skull, followed by the horrifying squelch of decimated brain matter.

“Ben,” Rey groans, and the sound seems to snap him out of his bloody trance. He throws the crowbar aside and falls to his knees next to her.

“Rey,” he says desperately, scooping up her uninjured hand. “I have to get you into the house. You're going to freeze out here when you go into shock.”

Her head lolls to the side and she tries to focus her fuzzy vision on Ben. “How?”

“What?”A tear breaches his eyelid and rolls down his cheek. Rey reaches one hand up to catch it.

“ _Ben,_ ” she gasps. The tear had splashed a perfect, clear spot through the blood on her skin. “You're here,” she tells him.

More tears trickle off his face. “I'm here,” he confirms in a broken whisper. “I have no idea how.”

“I do,” she rasps, every word tortuous. _I did it._

A violent shiver wracks her body and draws his focus away from her words. “You're going into shock. I have to get you inside.”

He slips his arms under her shoulders and hips as carefully as he can, but Rey whimpers every time she moves. “I'm sorry, I'm sorry.”

“It's okay,” she says through clenched teeth. “It's going to hurt.”

He lifts her with ease and starts towards the house. Over his shoulder, Rey can see the tracks he leaves in the snow.

“I can feel the snow on my face,” he tells her in a hushed, awed tone. “I can feel the cold. Fuck, it's _really cold_.”

A laugh catches in Rey's throat before she can stop it and her entire chest cramps with pain so hard she can't breathe.

Ben kicks the door wide open, left ajar in his haste to get to Rey. He sets her down on the couch as carefully as possible, fretting that he should lay her somewhere else, that the cushions are too uneven or the seat too narrow. He looks about him for Rey's phone and snatches it off the coffee table. “What's your PIN?”

Her mumbles are incoherent. He roars in frustration and tosses the phone away, storming into the kitchen to find the old landline. It's discolored from age and he prays desperately that it still works. The tone that greets his ear when he picks it up is the most beautiful thing he's ever heard.

* * *

 

Time becomes a slippery, dark thing to Rey. She's not sure how many minutes pass while her vision swims from awake to black.

“The police are on their way,” Ben tells her, tucking a fluffy down comforter around her. “They said to try and stop any bleeding and to keep you warm. Only your head was bleeding so I'm going to go get a hot washcloth and clean off your face.”

“No,” she forces out, capturing his eyes. “Please stay here.”

Conflict wars on his face. He surveys her forehead gash that's finally clotted. “Okay, I'll stay.”

“Just hold my hand and tell me you love me.”

A little sob catches in his chest and he wipes tears off his face with his free hand. “I love you, Rey Niima. And I'm going to make you pancakes for breakfast and unzip your dress when you're stuck and bring you flowers and put a ring on your finger.”

“Don't forget about the trash,” she wheezes.

He laughs at her then. “And the trash.” He strokes her cheek. “What do you say?”

She cracks a tiny smile through the tearing burn of her split lip. All her skin is stiff with dried blood.“I'd like that very much, Ben Solo.”

* * *

 

Rey wakes to beeping machines and the off-white grid of a dropped ceiling. Her body is one amorphous blob of dull, throbbing aches and her thoughts feel like jelly.

Ben's face appears in front of her, glowing and elated. “You're awake!”

He reaches for the nurse alert and punches the button half a dozen times. A nurse bustles into the room a moment later and glares at him, but he couldn't care less.

“Mr. Solo, if you don't behave we will have to ban you from her room.” _That_ gets his attention and he cringes like a reprimanded puppy.

“I'll behave,” he promises.

“My mind is slugs,” Rey mumbles, the words bumbling and thick with her swollen lip. He grins at her and she thinks that sight does more for her pain than whatever they're pumping into her veins.

“It's the meds,” he tells her softly, his eyes flicking to the nurse. “Is the doctor coming?”

The nurse huffs. “ _Yes,_ Mr. Solo, the doctor is on her way.”

Rey thinks she's smiling because her lip hurts like bloody hell, but the rest of her face feels a little numb so she's not positive. “Whadda do?”

“I just want to make sure you get the best care,” he pleads in a near-whine. “Oh by the way, if anyone asks, we're engaged.”

She squints at him and he shrugs apologetically. “It was the only way they'd let me in here.”

Her eyes flutter shut for a minute. “Are you asking me to marry you?”

She can hear the grin in his voice. “Not right now.”

Her lips twitch and then her brows furrow. “How long was I out?”

“Not long, almost a day. You had surgery on your leg, it's pretty badly smashed up.” His mouth twists. “The doctor showed me the x-rays. You have a cyborg thigh now.”

She snorts weakly. “What?”

“Full of pins and screws and a couple plates.”

She frowns in distaste. “Will they be there forever?”

He shakes his head. “Not all of them.” His eyes grow dangerously dark and somber. “You had a bone fragment floating around. They said if it had moved a hair to the right that it would have pierced your femoral artery. You would have bled out while we waited for an ambulance to get through that storm.” His jaw clenches and his voice grows rough and hoarse. “I almost lost you.”

“But you didn't,” she murmurs. “You didn't lose me.” She searches his dark velvet eyes and tears prick her own. “And I got you back.”

He strokes her unmarred cheek and slides a hand into hers. “I don't understand how that happened.”

“Time,” she says, feeling barely coherent. “I fixed it.” Her eyelids begin to flutter shut. “I want to know how you got alive,” she says, her voice barely above a whisper.

His thumb traces the veins on the back of her hand. “I came back and you weren't in the kitchen. You weren't anywhere. And then I saw you and Snoke outside.” He recounts the rest of his experience, the strange energy that brought him to his knees, the change. “I came back to life,” he finishes, marveling at the concept still.

Rey's eyes are half-shut but her lips curl in a satisfied smile. He brushes his nose against the inside of her wrist, endlessly drawn to her. Even in the hospital, with strange chemicals rushing through her blood and sterilized fabric on her body, he can smell her, as if all the years without his full senses have brought them back in blazing technicolor. Her skin carries a delicate, lush bouquet that brings to mind berries and sunshine, mixed with a hint of feminine musk. His stomach stirs at the prospect of every other part of her body that he will soon get to taste and scent. But before all that, he just wants to see her heal. He wants to see her - eyes fully open, smooth skin, lip and head un-stitched – eat and drink and laugh and just _be._

Rey begins to drift off. “Want to see the doctor. Want to tell you,” she sighs. “How I got you back.”

He presses a kiss to her brow. “Tomorrow, sweetie. Or the day after that or the day after that. We have all the time in the world.”

She falls asleep with a smile on her face.

* * *

 

Rey spends most of the next 48 hours asleep, waking up mostly during the nurse rounds. The doctor assures her this is normal; surgery and trauma exhausts the body. The heavy cocktail of painkillers make it worse. When she is awake, she always finds Ben next to her bed, his hand on hers, and a book in the other.

“Read to me,” she murmurs sleepily. He smiles and presses a kiss to an unbruised spot on her forearm. Then he reads to her. His sonorous voice makes the words melt into her mind like snowflakes on warm skin. He reads until she returns to her formless dreams.

She's significantly more coherent the next day but Ben looks like he's soaked up all her exhaustion and now he's wearing it on his face. The deep purple bags under his eyes and paleness of his skin bring a frown to her eyes that he doesn't miss.

“What's wrong?”

“Why aren't you sleeping?”

His gaze falls to the floor. “I'm trying. It's like my body can't remember how. And every time I wake up, I panic.”

Her brows knit in a question and he gives her a little head shake. “It feels like when I used to, well, come back. You know, after disappearing. When I lost time. Now when I wake up, I don't know where I am or where you are or what's real.”

She reaches for him with her good arm, trying not to jostle the IV inside her elbow, and he leans forward to meet her hand on his cheek. He turns into her touch and kisses her palm. They hold each others gaze for a long minute, wordless comfort flowing between them. Finally she sighs and drops her hand back to the bed. Ben immediately scoops it up.

“Tell me what's been going on,” she requests.

“Well, this situation has our whole village shaken up,” he tells her. “They found a pistol in Snoke's jacket, haven't figured out where he got it yet. That plus his prints on the crowbar was enough to convince them that everything I did was self-defense. “Plus, they don't really know what to do when someone is killed by a man who's legally dead.”

She drags her fingers over the palm of his hand, tracing the soft groove of his life line again and again.

“What about the tape recorder?”

His eyes flash with a fathomless, infinite pain. “I turned it over to the police. I told them everything. They got a hold of Hux. Apparently he's in London, but he agreed to come back and give a statement.”

Her voice cradles him. “Your parents?”

His jaw clenches. “They're both on the way.” His eyes shutter briefly with a dark look. “The police told them I was alive. I wanted to wait until I figured out what to say. They don't know yet, about Snoke.”

“Will they?”

He turns his eyes to hers. “I know I have to, before all this hits the news. But I don't know if I can do it, Rey.”

“I'll be here, Ben. I'll be right beside you, if you want.”

He lets out a broken sigh. “I know you will.”

“What else have you told the police? About where you've been?”

“I told them I didn't want to talk about it. It's not illegal to disappear. But they keep calling me. And I have to tell my parents _something_.” A smile tugs at the corner of his mouth. “Help me think of a reason I've been missing for six years.”

“Amnesia.”

He makes a face at her.

“It's possible.”

“I got amnesia so I just wandered away from home and fled the country, leaving all my things behind?”

She huffs and hums thoughtfully. “You got kidnapped. Umm – no! You wanted to fake your death. To escape! Start over somewhere new with a different identity. You went to South America.”

Ben's lips curl in a smirk. “I'd have a tan if I did that.”

“ _Really_ far south.”

He makes another face at her.

“What? Do you have anything better?”

“No,” he replies, hanging his head. “Maybe Maz will have an idea,” he muses.

Rey blinks at him. “What?”

“Oh, I emailed her a couple days ago,” he informs her. “She said she's coming to us immediately, so I guess she's flying here. She said she remembers our Skype call and our emails.” His voice gets quiet. “But then she said the email chain is gone and so is the call history.”

Her stomach drops. “It really did change everything,” she breathes.

“What?”

“Remember when you told me that you saw me and I begged you not to confront Snoke?”

He nods slowly, a puzzled look on his face.

“What _exactly_ did I say?”

He repeats the same words he told her the very first time.

Her heart thrums in her chest and she shakes her head at him. “But I didn't, not this time.”

Realization dawns in his eyes. “What did you say?”

“I told you to run because Snoke was going to kill you. I said 'Snoke murders you,' right before you vanished.”

He stares at her in stunned silence. “That's not what I remember though.”

“But it changed everything. Before you got to us, Snoke said he saw us go into the shed. He called you a ghost. He knew you were dead. And then a second later, he talked about you like you were still alive.” Her eyes squeeze shut for a second. “I'll never forget it. Before he broke my leg, he said it was easy to spot a girl with a boy who hasn't been in the country for six years.”

Ben leans back into his chair with a thump. “ _That's it._ You were on the ground and he was talking, and then it happened. I changed.”

Rey's reply is interrupted by raised voices and a commotion outside the door. One voice drifts into their room and they immediately recognize it, despite only a single conversation.

Ben jumps to his feet. “Maz!” He peers through the narrow window set in the door. Down the hall, a nurse and Maz are locked in a fierce conversation and the nurse begins motioning to a security guard. Ben yanks open the door and skids across the floor to them. “Maz!”

The nurse's face narrows into a frown when she recognizes Ben. “You know this woman?”

He nods. “We've been waiting for her for two days. She flew in from New York.”

“I don't care where she came from, it's family only,” the nurse tells them stubbornly.

“I'm Rey's grandmother,” Maz replies without missing a beat.

The nurse eyes her. “You're not British.”

“Adopted grandmother.”

The nurse purses her lips, clearly not buying it.

Ben rests a protective hand on Maz's back. “Are you really trying to prevent this little old lady from seeing her only grandchild? Look at her! How much time do you think they have left?? What if-”

“Okay, okay!” The nurse cuts him off, throwing her hands in the air. “Fine.” She shuffles away with a sour expression.

“My, the staff here are really quite unpleasant.”

“It's my fault,” Ben admits with a sheepish grimace. “They don't like me very much. I kind of harassed them non-stop from the moment Rey got here.”

Maz looks up at him with eyebrows raised.

“I wanted to make sure they didn't mess anything up!”

She tuts at him and starts down the hallway. As soon as they enter Rey's room, Ben is at her side, finding her hand before he can even think about it and Maz watches them with some amusement.

“It's great to meet you in person,” Rey tells her. “Although you really didn't have to come -”

“Oh hush now,” Maz stops her. “You didn't ask me, I told you I was coming. Do you really think I would pass up the opportunity to see a living ghost in person?” She scans Ben's frame with narrowed eyes and he feels like a specimen under a microscope. “Sit down, child,” she orders him, rummaging through an over-sized carpet bag that looks almost as old as she is. “Now tell me exactly how this all happened, start to finish. Spare no detail.”

While Ben and Rey take turns explaining the last few weeks to her, she performs some kind of exam on him, producing one piece of medical equipment after another from her giant bag. She flashes a pen light in his eyes, peers into his ears with an otoscope, takes his blood pressure, and listens to his lungs and heart while humming and occasionally stopping their story to ask clarifying questions. She even takes out a tube and cotton swab, instructing him to open his mouth for a sample.

“What are you going to do with that?” He nods towards the now-sealed tube.

“Sequence your DNA,” she informs him without batting an eye. She pulls out a rubber strip, a sealed bag containing a winged needle, and three small tubes. “I would really like to take a blood sample as well.” Ben's eyes dart to Rey's face and she nods at him encouragingly.

“I hate needles,” he grumbles, but he rolls up his sleeve for her anyway. She sets about tying the rubber around his bicep, swiping the inside of his arm with an alcohol pad, and poking at the blue veins visible through his light skin. “You need to take better care of yourself, young man. You're dehydrated.”

Rey frowns at Ben over Maz's head, but he doesn't notice, hissing when she slides the needle in. After she's siphoned off three small tubes and stored them in what looks like a lunch cooler full of ice blocks, she turns back to them with a satisfied expression. “Well, it appears so far that you are a normal human. But we can't be sure until I run some tests.”

His eyebrows reach for his hairline. “A _normal_ human?”

She nods once. “A human from our universe.”

Rey's mouth gapes. “So you think maybe there _was_ a universe cross-over?”

“If there was, I'll find some unusual DNA markers. In my experience, humans from other universes always have DNA differences. Very subtle, but enough to track. No, I think there was a time loop and you fixed it. Ben saw you before he went to confront Snoke, but he still got murdered. But he told you about it, and then when you appeared to him in our timeline, you modified your message. Because of that, Ben escaped Snoke's grasp, and didn't get murdered. And now here he is.”

A million questions bubble up but Rey and Ben both blurt the biggest one at the same time. “Why?”

Maz smirks and shakes her head a tiny bit, as if enjoying an inside joke with herself. “Soulmates, probably. Your energies are drawn towards each other. The universe wants you to be together, it just got a little confused first.”

Ben tilts his head. “Confused?”

“Soulmates?” Rey repeats skeptically.

Maz makes a frustrated noise. “You can accept that a ghost came back to life but you have a problem with the concept of soulmates?”

Rey shrugs one shoulder. “I just never believed in that kind of stuff.”

“Well, in a world with ghosts and people who see things before they happen, know things they shouldn't, ley lines -”

“Ley lines?” Rey can't contain her disbelief now. “You're telling me ley lines are real?”

Maz sets her hands on her hips. “Of course they are! There's a Welsh professor I know who hunts them and my, the stories he could tell you! There's a group of teenagers in Virginia – well, we don't have time for that long story right now. Trust me when I say soulmates are one of the most believable things.”

“I have more questions,” Ben adds with far less disbelief than Rey.

Maz snorts. “I'm certain you do. But first we need to deal with the past. Where have you been? What has changed? And we have to get the authorities off your back. In my experience, cops sniffing around means other people get wind of it. People you do _not_ want around.”

He tilts his head. “Like the CIA?”

Maz scoffs at him. “The CIA, NSA, FBI – they're all adorable kittens compared to the kind of people I'm talking about.”

Rey's stomach flutters. She doesn't like any of this. The world is suddenly bigger and more tangled and darker than she ever believed. She doesn't realize she's crushing Ben's hand in hers until he shakes it a bit. She lets out a sharp exhale.

“I know,” Maz says with a more assuring tone. “This is scary. It's always like that the first time. But we can handle it.”

Rey and Ben share a look. “What now?” Ben questions Maz without looking away.

“We make it look like you existed for the last six years.”

He turns to her then. “How?”

She smirks. “I have just the person for the job, she's the best of the best. And she won't ask any questions. Her name is Rose.”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And we have even more answers! But not quite all. Not sure how much more explanation we'll get. What do you guys think?


	9. Chapter 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is it babes. The last chapter. Thank you so much for being patient while I finished it and I hope the wait was worth it. 
> 
> TW: Discussions of child abuse and sexual assault. If you want to skip it, stop reading at ******** and resume at the next *******. I'll put a summary at the end.

Ben freezes in the bar entrance, the ruckus of laughing patrons and the scents overwhelm him – alcohol, cologne, lingering cigarette smoke, the clean, sharp bite of winter air. He orders a double whiskey and tries to steady his grip when the bartender hands it to him. He still expects that brush of air when he reaches for solid objects and then his limbs passing through. But the glass presses to his palm and his fingers wrap around it, the surface cool and solid against his skin.

The deep golden liquid coats his tongue and leaves a satisfying burn down his throat, something he thought he'd never experience again. The sensations distract him and he doesn't have to wait long for the mystery hacker.

“Ben?”

Before he can respond, a short girl with springy black bangs and a determined set to her features slides into the booth seat across from him. He nods at her. “That's me. Rose?”

She flashes him a surprisingly cheery smile. “The one and only.” She extends a hand to him. “Nice to meet you.”

As soon as she releases his hand, she digs into her messenger bag perched on the seat beside her and pulls out a sleek laptop. Her eyes narrow at the screen. “Let's get started. So, you want me to make you uh- appear?”

He just nods again, anxiety already kicking up in his stomach. “What did Maz tell you?”

“Only that I need to make someone appear.” She gives him a rueful smile. “Usually I make people disappear, not the other way around.” Ben blanches and Rose rushes to explain. “Not like, murder! Or anything like that. Sometimes people just need to get away from their lives. They need to escape. I get rid of paper trails and stuff. Set them up with what they need to be a different person.”

“So passports and things like that?”

She purses her lips. “Officially, no. I work for a cyber security company. But unofficially...”

He tilts his head a fraction. “Well, I need to appear, but make it look like I previously disappeared because I _did_ want to get away from my life. I can't give you a lot of detail why-”

She's already waving a dismissive hand. “Yeah, yeah, big secret and all that. I'm used to it.” Her fingers fly across the keys for a few minutes. “Maz says you were gone six years?”

He nods and pulls a paper out his pocket, enjoying the smooth slide of it against the grain of the table. “Here are the dates and everything.”

She glances at the paper while she types, occasionally pausing to hum thoughtfully to herself while she stares at the screen.

“So where do you want to disappear to, exactly?”

He shrugs. “Whatever's easy and believable. South America?”

She nods slowly. “I can do that. Some airplane or train tickets every so often, a few entries here and there in places that ask for ID. Obviously, I'll get all that stuff for you.”

He faintly smiles. “Unofficially.”

She returns the look. “Right. Unofficially. I've got a guy who makes incredible fakes. He even weathers them so it looks like they've been used. He's really going to have fun with your stuff.”

He gulps another sip of his drink. “And I need to know exactly what I was 'doing,'” he adds with air quotes.

Rose rummages through her bag again for a notebook and a pen. She flips to an open page and lays it out between them. “Sometimes I like to do things the old fashioned way. It's a lot easier to get rid of a physical paper trail than a digital one.”

She starts scribbling dates on the page. “We've got six years to make up. So let's create a map and fill in the details so everyone has their stories straight.”

Ben rubs the back of his head while she sketches out a rough world map next to the list of dates. “When do you need payment by?” He hasn't figured out yet how to get back into his bank accounts – if they even still exist.

She answers without looking up. “Half up front, half after.”

Maz warned him about the price and Ben counts himself lucky to have a decent stash of cash in his old bedroom, wedged under a loose floorboard where his bed used to be. That was one of his favorite post-death surprises – finding his childhood bedroom utterly emptied, right down to smudges on the walls and any speck of dust. Like he was never there. Finding boxes of his stuff later in the attic didn't soften the blow much.

“So uh, how do you know Maz?”

Rose pauses her scribbling and purses her lips. “That's...classified.”

“Sorry,” he says, abashed. “Dumb question.”

She spins her pen around her fingers. “I get it, being curious and all. Maz's uhmmm – line of work requires certain skills sometimes, skills I provide for her. That's really all I can say.” She gives him a crooked grin. “I would ask Maz if you want real answers.”

Ben hums in thought and nods before she goes back to work. Several quiet minutes pass before she leans back, surveying her notes with a satisfied look. “Okay, let's start at the beginning.”

* * *

 

After the meeting with Rose, Ben returns to the hospital, taking a seat next to her bed and trying his best not to panic. Han and Leia make small talk with Rey but it peters out into awkward, expectant silence until everyone's watching Ben. His breaths shake and he can't meet their eyes.

“Mom, Dad. I have something to tell you.” He flips his phone around and around while his parents exchange worried looks. The police had digitized he recording and kept the reorder. Rey squeezes his forearm and with a whooshing exhale, he finally taps his screen.

The recording starts with fuzzing static, and it instantly transports her back to the day they recovered it from the shed. This time, Ben lets it play all the way through.

***********

Snoke's voice leads the recording. _“Ben. So gracious of you to visit. I've been so lonely.”_ The sickening amusement in his voice immediately brings bile to her throat. Ben's ashen face shows he's not faring much better.

“ _I'm going to the police. I'm going to tell them everything you did to me and Hux.”_

Snoke laughed, a harsh and papery sound. _“Do it. You think they'll believe you? It's been what, almost 10 years? They'll just ask what took you so long.”_

Ben's voice is barely audible. _“You touched us. For years. Raped us.”_

Leia's muffled cry cuts the silence in between Ben's voice. Han looks ready to kill.

“ _They'll do something. Hux will back me up.”_

Snoke laughed again, harder and cutting. _“That's a lie and you know it. That spineless boy would never raise a word against me. I own him.”_

Desperation filled Ben's voice. _“I'll change his mind.”_

Snoke scoffed. _“I'd like to see you try.”_ His voice took on a mocking saccharine tone and suddenly came louder as he moved closer to Ben. _“My child, honestly, I'm hurt. After all I've done for you, this is how you repay me?”_

“ _Wha-what?”_ Ben stammered.

“ _Who looked after you when your parents abandoned you? Who gave you attention and love when you had no one?”_

“ _That wasn't love.”_ Tears cracked Ben's strangled voice.

“ _You never told me no,”_ Snoke accused. _“You needed my affection; I don't know where these silly ideas about 'abuse' come from.”_

Ben chokes on a cry. _“You're a sick bastard, Snoke. You'll regret it someday.”_

Ben stops the recording abruptly and hides his face in his hands. Han's relieved breath mixes with Leia's quiet cries that she tries to muffle in her husband's shoulder.

Han finally breaks the silence, his voice gruff. “Thank you for sharing that with us Ben, I know that was hard. We had no idea.” Ben's jaw tics and Rey knows he's struggling to stop himself from falling apart completely. A flash of anger heats her stomach. _We didn't know_ sounds a lot like an excuse to her- maybe even an accusation - and not what Ben needs to hear right now.

Leia springs up from her seat suddenly and crosses the room, pulling Ben into her arms. “I'm so sorry, baby. I should have known. I knew something was wrong, something was off, but I just couldn't imagine – I thought I was being paranoid-” she cuts off suddenly, shaking her head. “I should have done something.”

************

Ben grips the back of Leia's sweater in both hands with white knuckles. “It's not your fault, Ben,” she murmurs to him and Rey can see the words tip him over. A broken sob escapes him as he starts crying hard. She whispers quiet apologies and encouragement that Rey doesn't catch, until his cries die down into sniffles and shuddering breaths. He pulls back and roughly wipes his face with the palms of his hands. “Snoke came after me later that day, tried to kill me. I panicked and just ran off. I couldn't stand the idea of going back to the house - “

Leia interrupts him. “You don't need to explain yourself, Ben. We understand.”

Of course, this part is a lie. Ben still doesn't remember his death. Rey suddenly wonders if maybe it's because it never happened – not really, not anymore. Rey and Ben's actions sent ripples so far into time, that even events years before were caught up in the current and changed. She stares at him with a deep wonder in her eyes until he shoots her a questioning look. She just shakes her head with a little smile. She's known him for such a short time, but the force of him, _them,_ is undeniable and cosmic in a way that overwhelms her.

Han clears his throat. “If anyone's interested, we smuggled in some contraband,” he says with a sly smile, pulling a box of Jaffa cakes out from under his jacket. Rey makes a delighted noise and a grabby hand until he brings them over. Everyone breathes a silent sigh of relief.

* * *

 

Ben acts eager to put the “incident” behind him and everyone seems okay with it. Newspapers hound him and Rey for info but they refuse to give any kind of statement. He gets a choked up call from Hux, apologizing and confessing he was still scared of Snoke. They hang up with promises to visit each other as soon as Rey can travel.

Finn and Poe take it upon themselves to become a permanent installment in the hospital until Rey is released. Ben meets them with a bit of prickly trepidation and they interact with a sense of vague jealousy and possessiveness for a few days. It culminates one afternoon in a thrown cup of jello by Ben answered with a drenching of water from a flower vase by Finn, with Poe cackling in the corner.

“Enough!” Rey says with an exasperated noise. “I'm going to have all three of you banned from the hospital if you don't get along.”

“Hey,” Poe protests. “I didn't do anything!”

She fixes him with a narrow-eyed look. “Do you want me to list off your sins in this matter? Because I can, and I will.”

He throws up defensive hands. “No, no. We'll be better. Promise. _Right guys?_ ”

Finn and Ben mumble sheepish agreements and, after a few minutes of shuffling around, crabby apologies to each other. Things go smoothly from that point. The day after the doctor clears Rey to leave, Finn and Poe pack up and prepare to go back home. Rey swears she detects something that's just on the sad side of displeased when Ben bids them goodbye. Not even three hours pass before Rey spies texts from Finn and Poe on Ben's phone.

She makes a mock pout. “Are you stealing my boys from me?”

He just chuckles and kisses her hair. “I'll add you to the group chat, promise.”

* * *

 

Ben finds a little studio near the hospital to make Rey's recovery easier, situated in the top level of an ancient house-turned-bar. He brings Emily with him, since suddenly Leia and Han find themselves much less enthusiastic about being home.

When Rey's released from the hospital, he insists on carrying her over the threshold, and she's greeted with flowers and gifts sent from various members of the Resistance.

“It's a little small,” Ben laments.

“I think it's adorable,” Rey responds, smiling at the eclectic mix of vintage and mid-century modern furniture that somehow all works.

He runs an appreciative hand over the door jam. “I never want to step foot in that house again.”

Ben starts his calligraphy business back up, slowly, and mostly for the sense of stability and normalcy instead of the money.

“Do you want to keep working for the Resistance?” Ben inquires one night, as they're tucked into their only couch, watching a movie. Rey's not really paying attention to the film, she's luxuriating in the feel of his _realness,_ his solid chest behind her and the tickle of his breath on her ear when he speaks.

“Maybe,” she says after a moment. “But you said you didn't want to stay in the same place.”

He shifts behind her. “I've been thinking about that. What if you do something like Doctors Without Borders, except for cars?” Move city to city, keep providing the low-cost mechanic services like you do now. I bet my mom would love that idea.”

Rey lets out a small coo. “I love that idea too.”

As Ben predicted, Leia immediately jumps on the concept.

“I have at least another six months of therapy before I can get back to work,” Rey warns her. Leia makes a dismissive noise. “It will take a while to get the details lined up anyway. You can be as involved as you want, the setup will mostly be calling people and doing research.”

Rey and Leia keep in touch, setting up the details of her program, contacting mechanic shops in different cities to talk to them about it. They both grow more excited about the project by the day, and a paper from the nearest city even does a small front page feature on Rey.

Frequent trips into the countryside keep them from going stir-crazy as Rey gains her strength and mobility back.

It's on one of these days, admiring the roll of green hills in rare sunshine from the hood of Ben's car at a pull-off, that he gets down on one knee with a slender band of rose gold and pink Morganite gems and asks Rey to spend the rest of her life with him.

He barely makes it into the little speech he had prepared before Rey flings herself into his arms, cutting him off with kisses and tearful cries of “yes, yes.”

They get married in a little garden bursting with wild roses and trailing ivy vines, a small collection of their friends and family around them. Everyone cries.

Rey and Ben pack up their little flat and move to London. Rey launches her “Mechanics Without Borders” program through the Resistance and comes home everyday to her husband with a grin on her face and grease-lined nails, but he doesn't mind about the grease part, as long as she never stops smiling like that. He decides they've both had enough sadness for the next 60 years. Every morning he wakes up to a rush of relief and joy. The years pass, the cities change, he loses track of the number of places they've lived and the people they've met. He waits for the thrill of Rey's kisses and the warm glow of contentment when they lay in their bed, sweaty and satisfied, to wear off. But it never does.

Not for Rey. She's surprised by how quickly she adjusts – to Ben, to falling asleep in his arms and waking up in them too. His voice in the mornings, when he greets her with a steaming cup of tea and a gentle kiss to her forehead (and sometimes fresh pancakes). It feels _right_ and true in a way that hums deep in her chest. It's a quiet, unwavering certainty of the knowledge that they crossed dimensions and time to find each other, that their love defied death. It feels like a fairy tale, Rey thinks. And so, she decides they will live happily ever after.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I loved writing this story and talking to you all, hearing theories, and just generally having a ball. All your comments brightened my day week after week and I'm so grateful for everyone who decided this story was worth their time. Come say hi on Tumblr @ bisexual-dilemmas! 
> 
> TW summary: Ben plays the recording of his confrontation with Snoke for his parents and Rey. Han says they "didn't know" and Leia apologizes for not realizing and not protecting him. Ben cries as she holds him. He explains that Snoke later came after him and he panicked and ran away.

**Author's Note:**

> Find me on tumblr @ bisexual-dilemmas


End file.
